Story Links Evaluation Final Report

f

Story Links Programme Evaluation
The impact of a parent partnership intervention that uses
therapeutic storywriting to support pupils at risk of exclusion
November 2009

Author:
Report for the
Trisha Waters Esmée Fairbairn
Foundation
University of Chichester and the
Training and
Development
Agency for
Schools (TDA)

Supported
by the TDA


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Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2. Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter 3. Presentation of Findings: Two Pupil Profiles ................................................................................. 18
Chapter 4. Presentation of Findings: A Cross‐Case Thematic Analysis of the Data ........................................ 36
Chapter 5. Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 98
Bibliography and additional resources .......................................................................................................... 105
Appendices .................................................................................................................................................... 107

Table of figures
Figure 1: Goodman's SDQ results for John (pupil profile A) ..................................................................... 26
Figure 2: Goodman's SDQ results for Aaron (pupil profile B) ................................................................... 34
Figure 3: SDQ Results for Impact of SLP on Pupils’ Emotional Anxiety .................................................... 36
Figure 4: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Pupils' Emotional Awareness ............................. 38
Figure 5: Goodman's SDQ for Impact on Difficulties Getting Along with Other Children ........................ 49
Figure 6: Goodman's SDQ for Impact on Pupils' Behavioural Difficulties in School ................................. 54
Figure 7: Parent and teachers views on impact of SLP on pupils' behaviour ........................................... 56
Figure 8: Goodman's SDQ for impact of pupils' difficulties on the child's learning environment ........... 63
Figure 9: Exclusions pre and post Story Links ........................................................................................... 63
Figure 10: Attendance of parents ............................................................................................................... 65
Figure 11: Frequency of reading to parent at home pre and post Story Links ........................................... 73
Figure 12: Parent’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Impact on Home/School Relationship ................. 81
Figure 13: Neale Analysis of Reading Ability pre and post Story Links intervention .................................. 89
Figure 14: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Impact on Pupils’ Reading .................................. 91
Figure 15: Goodman's SDQ for impact on hyperactivity and attentional difficulties ................................. 92
Figure 16: Goodman's SDQ for impact on pupils' Overall Stress ................................................................ 95
Figure 17: Pupils' Enjoyment of Story Links Sessions ................................................................................. 96
Figure 18: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on the Overall Benefit of Story Links ....................... 97
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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Training Development Agency for
schools (TDA) who provided the funding to make this research possible, and especially Jo Rideal
at the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Hilary Constable at the TDA for their support and belief
in the project.
My particular thanks go to Professor Helen Simons for her role as an external expert evaluator
who supported the monitoring of my subjectivity throughout the project. Her expert advice in
relation to the overall research design, interview methods and analysis of the data was
invaluable. Her comments on the draft of this report were also much appreciated.
I am grateful to the members of the Story Links Steering Group who turned up to meetings at
the end of their own work days to support the project. Thanks to Dr Heather Geddes, Dr Leslie
Ironside, Paul Myszor, Ian Hickey, Marion Cox, Tessi Archer and Wendy Tidman for all your
encouragement and constructive feedback.
I would also like to thank Judith Burns at Home Office for her accurate transcriptions of the
interviews and Helen Salgo at verything.co.uk for her work on the document presentation.
And of course a special thank you to all the teachers, parents and pupils who have participated
in the Story Links project. I was frequently moved by the power of the stories and experiences
that you shared with me in the course of this research.
Trisha Waters
University of Chichester
November 2009
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Acronyms Used in the Report

ADHD: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
ASC: Autism Spectrum Conditions
BESDs: Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties
DCSF: Department for Children Schools and Families (formerly DfES)
LM: Learning Mentor
NARA: Neale Analysis of Reading Ability
NASEN: National Association of Special Educational Needs
PATOSS: Association Parents and Teachers of Students with Specific Learning
Difficulties
SDQ: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
SEN: Special Educational Needs
SENCO: Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinator (teacher)
SERSEN: South‐East Region Special Educational Needs Partnership
SL: Story Links
SLP: Story Links Programme
TA: Teaching Assistant
TTRB: Teacher Training Resource Bank

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Executive Summary
The Story Links programme involved parents and pupils at risk of exclusion in co‐creating stories
that addressed the pupils’ behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and were also used to
develop the pupil’s reading skills. The programme was delivered by educational professionals
who had attended a 3‐day Story Links training. The evaluation used a case study approach to
provide an in‐depth exploration of the impact of the school‐based intervention on parents,
pupils and their learning.
The evaluation included a pre and post intervention standardised behavioural screening
questionnaire completed by classteachers, a pre and post intervention standardised reading
assessment, the analysis of over one hundred co‐created stories and the analysis of over eighty
interviews with parents, teachers, TAs and pupils who participated in the Story Links
intervention.
Key findings
1) Impact on pupils’ emotional and social well‐being
A significant improvement in pupils’ overall emotional stress
The pre‐intervention interviews with parents and teachers revealed a high incidence of
emotional anxiety in the target group of pupils. This finding was confirmed by the Goodman’s
SDQ for overall stress completed by the classteacher which showed three‐quarters of the pupils
as experiencing very high stress levels pre‐intervention. Post‐intervention, the majority of pupils
showed a significant reduction in overall stress.
The function and impact of the co‐created stories
The stories by parents and pupils had a powerful effect in several ways. Firstly, they often served
as a reminder of the nurturing role of the parent.
Secondly, many of the pupils’ stories addressed issues relating to both friendship difficulties and
sibling rivalry. Thirdly, they enabled the children to address their anxiety through the metaphor
in the story. Prominent themes that emerged in the stories were those of lack of friends, fear,
abandonment and lack of nurture. A content analysis of the stories indicated that many of the
story openings given by the Story Links teacher addressed ‘difficult’ emotional issues relating to
the particular child which in their own contribution they projected on to the story character.
This correlation between the story metaphor and pupil’s presenting emotional issues is
particularly evident in the in‐depth pupil profiles included in the full report.
Experience of positive attachment
The majority of pupils and parent s enjoyed coming along to the sessions, parents using words
such as ‘fun’, ‘laughter’, ‘enjoy’ and ‘giggle’ to describe their experience of the sessions. This is
an important finding as positive attachment takes place when parent and child are engaged
together in a ‘mutually enjoyable activity’. (Bowlby, 1988).
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What appeared to be particularly important to the pupils was the undivided attention of the
parent without distractions from siblings or household chores.
Contact with Teaching Assistants (TAs) also provided opportunities for the pupils to experience
positive attachment. The TAs attended the main sessions and also provided 2 x 20 min follow‐up
reading practice and drawing sessions each week which pupils had enjoyed, often ‘chatting’
about things that were on their mind while illustrating their stories. In fact, it was the TA rather
than the Story Links teacher who seemed to take on the role of the child’s ‘substitute
attachment figure’ providing them with a ‘secure emotional base’ in school (Bomber, 2008).
Significant improvement in peer relationships
There was a significant improvement in peer relationships as indicated by the SDQ, completed
by the classteacher, and observations from the parents and school‐based professionals who
noted that several of the pupils were more able to manage conflict situations.
2) Impact on Pupils’ behaviour and rates of exclusion
Significant improvement in pupils’ behaviour in school
By the end of the programme there had been a significant reduction in the SDQ score for
behavioural difficulties in the classroom for the majority of pupils who had initially scored above
average. This improvement was also noted by parents and Story Links teachers.
During the Story Links sessions, some pupils had taken a few weeks to settle in but all the Story
Links teachers reported that pupils’ behaviour had, overall, been remarkably good with only a
few needing to be reminded to listen and not interrupt others. Some teachers and parents
expressed surprise at how well pupils had behaved.
Impact on Exclusion
This was a significant decrease in pupils’ exclusion rates from school, the classroom and the
playground. Six of the twelve pupils had previously been excluded from school, with two of
these exclusions being in the last year, and another pupil regularly self‐excluded when anxious.
During the programme no pupils were excluded from school. In the 12 months prior to the
intervention, 11 of the 12 pupils had regularly been removed from the classroom or playground
because of their behaviour. During the Story Links programme the number of removals from the
classroom reduced dramatically and there was also a decrease in the number of removals from
the playground.
3) Engagement of parents with their child’s learning
Parents attended well
Given that many of the parents had not had regular or positive contact with the school before
the Story Links programme, the level of attendance was remarkably good. Apart from two
parents who did not complete the programme, the twelve parent sets included in the evaluation
attended seven out of ten of the sessions, with five parents attending all the sessions. Teachers’
apprehensiveness about parents not turning up, therefore, did not prove to be the case.
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Parental attendance was supported in some schools by teachers providing a pre‐intervention
meeting for parents, the SENCO’s support in choosing parents, and regular phone and text
message reminders to some parents from teachers about the times of sessions.
Positive impact on the home‐school relationship
All the teachers and a majority of the parents thought that the programme had had a positive
impact on the home‐school relationship. For the parents, it was the positive focus on the pupils’
learning rather than their poor behaviour that seemed to have made a difference.
Teachers commented that many of the parents had either had infrequent contact or a ‘tricky’
relationship with the school in the past, but that the Story Links programme had turned this
around.
Parental engagement with story metaphor
A critical aspect of the intervention was that the parent would engage and reflect on the
metaphor in the co‐created stories to address their child’s behavioural and emotional issues.
Most of the Story Links teachers reported that most were able to do this, though some parents
were initially more able to do this than others. A quarter of the parents had also begun making
up stories with their child at home and in two cases, siblings had also been included in this
activity.
Absent dads included in stories
Many of the stories indicated a preoccupation with an absent father. In some stories pupils
highlighted a yearning for more contact with their fathers and in others a sense of
abandonment. In two cases, the Story Links programme led to fathers (both of whom were
separated from the mother) coming into their sons’ schools for the first time. This had followed
on from the pupil showing their stories to the father.
4) Impact on pupils’ reading skills and engagement with learning
Increase in pupils’ reading to parent at home
Before the Story Links programme nearly half of the pupils never read to their parents at home
and only three parents said they heard their child read at least twice a week. Home reading
patterns changed dramatically during the programme with eight parents hearing their child read
at home at least twice a week.
Significant factors in this change cited by the parents were the increase in their own confidence,
and the pupils’ ownership of the stories.
Pupils, professionals and parents indicated that where parents did not manage to hear their
child read the primary reasons were the demands of siblings, parents’ own poor literacy skills or
a lack of time.
Significant reduction in hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in the classroom
There was a significant reduction in hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in the classroom.
This was indicated both by the SDQ and observations of classteachers.
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In the Story Links sessions, all pupils engaged well with the story‐making aspect and many talked
about the stories between sessions. Quite a few would remember the stories very accurately
indicating that they had paid good attention to what had been said.
Minimal increase in reading ability as measured on the NARA
There was minimal progress in the pupils’ reading ability as measured by the NARA. Eight out of
the twelve pupils were below the 6.01 starting reading age for both accuracy and
comprehension before the intervention. Four showed an increase in reading age for accuracy
and six for comprehension. When the pupils’ ages were factored in the progress was even more
marginal: the standardised scores and percentile ranks for accuracy showed a decrease for two
pupils and an increase for just one; those for comprehension scores showed an increase for
three pupils and a decrease for one pupil.
Overall, only one pupil made significant progress for both accuracy and comprehension, as
recorded by the NARA, and this was the pupil with the highest initial NARA score.
Improved engagement and confidence in reading
While the NARA scores indicated that pupils had made only a small amount of progress with
their reading skills, teachers and parents commented that all pupils showed an increased
interest in the activity of reading. Teachers mentioned how some pupils would now look at
books in quiet reading even though they were still not independent readers. Others were able to
focus more on sounding out words.
The programme also seemed to have an impact on pupils’ low self‐esteem, a key issue identified
by parents and teachers in the initial interviews as impeding the learning of the entire target
group. In the post interviews, pupils’ increased confidence as a reader was a prominent theme.
This developing self‐confidence was also evident in the Story Links sessions, not only in how
pupils contributed during the sessions, but also in their changed body language.
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Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Project overview
This report is an evaluation of the impact of the parent‐partnership Story Links programme. The
programme involved teachers, parents and pupils, at risk of exclusion and with poor literacy, in
co‐creating stories through which they might better understand the pupils’ emotional and
behavioural issues and also support their reading skills.
The overall Story Links Project was co‐funded by the Training and Development Agency for
Schools (TDA) and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. It had three strands:
• Strand 1: the delivery of a three‐day Story Links training to five cohorts of education
professionals supporting pupils at risk of exclusion (55 attended).
• Strand 2: to conduct an evaluation (reported here) of the impact of the 10‐week Story
Links Programme, delivered in school by professionals who completed the 3‐day
training, on pupils’ emotional and social well‐being and academic learning.
• Strand 3: the production of a training manual to support professionals using the
intervention in schools.
The overall project spanned 20 months with the evaluation research strand conducted over an
18 month period.
1.2 What is Story Links?
Story Links is a parent‐partnership intervention that uses therapeutic storywriting to support
pupils’ emotional well‐being and reading skills. Story Links grew out of the now established
Therapeutic Storywriting Groups (Waters, 2004; Waters 2004a; Waters 2008), developed by the
principal researcher, with the support of the South‐East Region Special Educational Needs
Partnership (SERSEN). These have been widely introduced into many schools in England.
Whereas the group model is a wave 2 group intervention1 that focuses on developing emotional
literacy and writing skills, Story Links is wave 3 intervention with individual pupils and their
parents , and focuses on developing emotional literacy alongside reading skills.
The Story Links programme, also developed by the principal researcher, involves pupils, parents
and teachers in the co‐creation of stories that address the pupils’ behavioural, emotional and
social difficulties (BESDs). It targets pupils aged 6‐11 years who have been identified as being at
risk of exclusion and who also have reading skills below those of their peers. For many of these
pupils, emotional difficulties in school can be related to attachment difficulties with their
parents or carers (Geddes, 2006). Story Links is a 10‐week intervention that uses joint
storywriting, and the metaphors it generates, to encourage the parent/carer to think about the
emotional and social well‐being of their child. It also aims to involve parents in their child’s

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The UK Primary National Strategy (2003) uses a 3 wave model of intervention: Wave 1: Quality education of all
(whole class); Wave 2: Small group; Wave 3: individual work.
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learning by encouraging them to regularly hear their child read the typed‐up co‐created stories
at home.
1.3 Background and context
The pupils targeted were all on the special educational needs (SEN) register for behavioural,
emotional and social difficulties (BESDs) and poor literacy and are some of the most vulnerable
children in our schools. For many of these pupils, their emotional difficulties can get in the way
of their learning and reading skills are often below those of their peers (Cole et al, 1998).
The National Audit of Support, Provision and Services for Children with Low Incidence Needs
(2006) identified both a lack of support for children at risk of educational exclusion and schools’
limited capacity to support pupils with BESDs (6.32 & 6.37). This audit also highlighted the need
to improve parent‐partnership in meeting the needs of these pupils and identified a lack of
support for parents (3.39 & 6.25).
Research by Desforges & Abouchaar (2003) has shown that, up to the age of eleven years,
parental involvement has a greater impact on pupils’ academic achievement than their school.
However, the parents of this group of pupils at risk of exclusion are often the least likely to be
engaged with their child’s learning (Social Exclusion Unit: Reaching Out, 2006).
The Story Links model draws on the concepts of attachment (Bowlby 1988; Geddes, 2006;
Bomber, 2008); emotional containment (Bion, 1984); and creating a ‘potential space’ (Winnicott,
1999) where parent and child can meet in a ‘mutually enjoyable activity’ that supports positive
relationship. The Story Links intervention aims to involve parents and pupils in such a ‘mutually
enjoyable activity’ ‐ of co‐created storymaking _which, because of the unpredictability and
creativity of the activity, is often ‘fun’ and gives rise to spontaneous laughter.
Hughes (2004) also proposes that the ‘co‐regulation of affect and the co‐construction of
meaning’ are central to the development of attachment security. Sessions are designed to
facilitate a co‐regulation of affect, i.e. emotional attunement between parent and pupil, in that
they provide an opportunity for parent and child to share their feelings with each other and
‘tune’ into each other’s story contributions. In relation to supporting co‐construction of
meaning, parents are encouraged to use the adult ability to think in story metaphor with their
child in order that both can gain a better understanding of their child’s emotional anxieties.
Story Links extends the pioneering work of Bettelheim (1991) who considered that re‐storying
within the imaginary world was an important way to support emotionally vulnerable children in
their search for meaning i.e. a way to make sense of their emotional experiences. Whereas
Bettelheim worked just with the child, in the Story Links model this search for meaning through
story metaphor is co‐constructed by the parent and child with the support of an educational
professional.
According to Piaget (1979), it is only around the time of adolescence that children begin to
develop the capacity for abstract or meta‐cognitive thinking. The interpretation of metaphor,
the meaning of which is to transfer something from one level to another, is itself a meta‐
cognitive skill. This is why a child will accept a story at face value, operating as s/he does at what
Piaget calls the ‘concrete‐operational level’, while adults have the ability to intuitively also read
story metaphor on another level of meaning. Thus the basic activity of thinking consciously
about an issue through metaphor is an adult skill. One of the theoretical principles of the Story
Links intervention is that by encouraging the parent to use this adult skill to think about their
child’s internal emotional world, they are being supported to step into the adult position in
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relation to their child. This is pertinent as many pupils with behavioural difficulties can take on
the role of the parent and present as a ‘parentified’ child (Jurkovic 1997). In this case there is
something of a role reversal with the child alternatively ‘looking after’ but also bullying the
parent and the parent often failing to provide appropriate boundaries for the child. With such a
dynamic the parent and child often become embattled over quite minor issues. By supporting
the parent to use story metaphor to think about their child’s emotional and social needs, the
parent can reclaim the ‘mindful’ adult position, thus helping the child to feel contained and
‘held in mind’ by their parent.
In Story Links sessions the parent and pupil co‐create a story which is then typed‐up story and
sent home for the pupil to read to the parent and is also used in school as a reading text
between sessions. In this way, the written story becomes a positive attachment object ‐
reminding both the child and parent of a positive shared educational experience. The
intervention is solution‐focused and based on the premise that many parents of children with
challenging behaviour are not keen to talk about their child’s poor behaviour (again!) but just
about all of them are keen that their child should read well. As the recent Steer Report, Learning
Behaviour, states:
There are few parents who do not want the best for their children. Some
may not have the confidence to engage with the school and some may
feel alienated from school as a result of their own educational
experience. Steer 2009:53
Defining exclusion
Much has been written about what is meant by exclusion and its more positive converse
‘inclusion’. However, there is often disagreement and controversy as to how inclusion should be
defined as highlighted by the Report from the Select Committee on SEN (2006) which states that
‘There is considerable confusion over the term inclusion with a wide range of meanings applied
to the term’.
While many schools are making efforts to reduce their formal exclusion rates there are still
many pupils in these schools who are being internally removed on a regular basis either from
the classroom or the playground because of behavioural difficulties. For the purpose of this
evaluation, exclusion from school, removal from the classroom and removal from the
playground as a consequence of pupils’ behaviour are all included in the overarching term ‘at
risk of exclusion’.
1.4 Structure of the Story Links Sessions
The Story Links programme runs over 10 weeks and is led by an educational professional who
has attended the 3‐day training course. The facilitating professional can be a special educational
needs coordinator (SENCO), SEN support teacher, educational counsellor, learning mentor or
inclusion manager. For ease of writing the term Story Links teacher will be used to refer to the
facilitating educational professional in the programme. Sessions with the parent and child last
30 minutes with a further 30 minutes required by the Story Links teacher for typing up, printing
and distributing the story. A teaching assistant (TA), ideally one attached to the pupil’s class, also
joins in the sessions and implements 2 x20 minute school‐based follow‐up sessions using the
written text to develop the child’s reading skills during the week. As the model has an open
systemic structure other professionals such as a learning mentor, home‐school liaison officer or
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a social worker engaged in supporting the child can also be invited to attend sessions. There is
an initial session with the parent and pupil to tell them about the programme, deal with any
concerns and ensure commitment to the programme of 10 sessions.
The main sessions begin with the teacher having a few minutes with the parent to review how
things have been at home with their child during the week and in particular to ask how joint
reading activities have gone. They are then joined by the TA and the pupil who will bring some
feedback from his/her teacher on their behaviour during the week in class which is shared with
the parent. There follows a ‘feelings check‐in’ during which the teacher uses active listening
skills (empathic verbal reflection) to reflect and contain the feelings expressed by the parent and
pupil.
The child then reads the previous week’s story to the group with support from the teacher or
the parent. This then leads into the central activity of joint story‐making. The teacher gives the
story opening, which will have emerged from the discussion with the parent about the child’s
current emotional issues. For instance, if the parent says the child has had angry outbursts it
might be, ‘Leslie the lion roared. He was furious.’
Beginning with the child and followed by the parent, each person present then takes a turn to
continue the story, with the teacher making notes. The teacher takes responsibility for
completing each week’s story and then retells the newly created story to the group. The child
leaves the room with the TA and the teacher encourages the parent to reflect on the
metaphor/imagery in the newly created story and to think about what metaphors might be
included in the next week’s story.
Once the parent has left, the teacher types up the story at the appropriate reading level for the
child. This is not done as a verbatim report but the core story line is maintained with an effort
made to include the actual phrases used by the parent and child. A copy then goes home with
the child to be read with the parent at home and a copy goes to the teaching assistant for work
on the two 20 minute reading skills sessions during the week.
See Teachers TV video clip (www.teachers.tv/video/34482) in Appendix 1 to view a sample
session led by the researcher.
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Chapter 2. Methodology
2.1 Aims of the Evaluation
This evaluation was conducted following the delivery of the three‐day Story Links training to 55 educational
professionals supporting vulnerable pupils and the ten‐week programme subsequently introduced by them
into schools. With a sample of those who been trained, the evaluation sought to assess the impact of the
intervention on:
a) pupils’ emotional and social well‐being
b) pupils’ behaviour and rates of exclusion (from school, classroom and playground)
c) the engagement of parents with their child’s learning
d) pupils’ reading skills and engagement with learning.
2.2 Evaluation design
The evaluation adopted a case study design, with the Story Links programme being the case.
Case study was a particularly appropriate design because it enabled an in‐depth exploration of
the co‐construction, by parents and pupils, of stories that relate to the child’s emotional world
and the impact of the written stories in engaging parents in their child’s learning. Case study also
has the flexibility to be responsive, which is important with a hard to access and vulnerable
target group, and also to monitor changes over time. It can utilize a range of methods, including
qualitative and quantitative, and both were used in this case in order to document the
complexity of the intervention and evaluate its effects. The exact methods used were as
follows:
2.2.1 Quantitative methods
1. Goodman’s Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (behavioural and social
skills) completed by classteachers
2. Pre and post assessment of pupils’ reading using the Neale Analysis of Reading
Ability (NARA)(1997)
3. Pre and post exclusion rates from school, classroom and playground
4. Rates of parental attendance at Story Links sessions
5. Likert scaling questionnaires which rated teachers’ and parents’ views on the
impact of the Story Links intervention on:
i. pupils’ engagement with reading
ii. pupils’ awareness of their own feelings and the feelings of others
iii. pupils’ behaviour
iv. the home/school relationship
v. the overall benefit of the Story Links programme.
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6. Likert questionnaire, completed by pupils, rating their enjoyment of the Story
Links sessions
The Goodman’s Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
The quantitative Goodman’s SDQ behavioural screening questionnaire was used to assess
classteachers’ perceptions of the pupils’ behaviour, emotional and social difficulties pre and post
intervention. Both the Boxall Profile (ref) and the Rutter Child Behaviour Checklist (ref)
behaviour screening tool were also initially investigated but the Goodman’s was chosen as it is
quicker to administer than either of these. The Goodman’s can be administered in about ten
minutes and this was an important factor as it was to be completed by classteachers who often
have difficulty finding time for an extended meeting during the school day. Additionally, the
Goodman’s is a well‐established standardised measure that correlates well with the Rutter
behaviour screening tool (Goodman, 1997). An online facility at www.sdqscore.net provided by
Youth in Mind was used to convert the questionnaire data into final scores for each pupil. A
copy of the questionnaire is included in Appendix 2 and the two individual pupil profiles provide
examples of the completed score sheets.
The score for Overall Stress is calculated by summing the scores for Emotional Anxiety +
Behavioural Difficulties + Hyperactivity & Attentional Difficulties + Difficulties Getting Along with
Other Children.
Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA)
The second revised version of the NEALE analysis (1997) was chosen as the tool for measuring
pupils’ pre and post reading skills. This measuring tool has been used for over forty years to
monitor literacy in mainstream schools and in 1997 the standardisation was updated by NFER‐
Nelson. It was also chosen because it provides two parallel forms for assessment which allow a
pre and post measure of reading skills of the 10 week intervention.
In analysing the results of the NARA, attention was given to the 68% confidence banding
provided alongside the scores in the NARA manual, 1997. This ‘confidence band’ indicates the
range of scores within which the true score is likely to fall.
2.2.2 Qualitative methods
1. Pre and post semi‐structured interviews with individual pupils, parents/carers,
classteachers and Story Links teachers.
2. Post semi‐structured interviews with Story Links teacher assistant (TA) and
SENCO (when available).
3. Content analysis of parent/pupil stories.
4. Two in‐depth pupil profiles.

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Interviews
Number and length of interviews
There were at least seven interviews for each pupil/parent set, i.e. pre and post interviews with
pupil, parent and teachers or TA, giving a total of over eighty interviews. Parent, teacher and TA
interviews generally lasted at least 20 minutes. Pupil interviews were also about 20 minutes,
though these included administration of the NARA reading assessment.
Formulation of Interview Questions
The questions used in the individual interviews with parents and pupils are listed in Appendix 4.
In framing pupil questions thought was given to using language that would be familiar to the
children. The Likert rating scales were also included in the interview questions and provided four
options for participants to choose from.
Recording and transcription of interviews
Interviews took place in a quiet room. The interviews were all digitally recorded and a back‐up
handwritten record was also taken. Transcription of interviews was undertaken by an external
agency and exchange of data was via a password‐protected internet electronic storage facility.
The transcriptions of the audio recordings were then checked for accuracy by the principal
researcher.
All interviews were transcribed for the first three pupil sets as this data was used to establish
the main thematic headings for the analysis of the set of interviews. For the remaining
pupil/parent sets, all parent and Story Links teacher interviews were fully transcribed by the
external transcriber, while some of the shorter interviews with pupils and TAs were analysed in
audio form and pertinent sections transcribed by the principal researcher.
2.2.3 Analysis of data
Analysis of interview data
The qualitative interview data was analysed thematically across the cases using NVivo software
and interpretative processing.
The analysis comprised five stages:
• transcriptions from the external agency were checked for accuracy against the audio
recordings;
• audio recordings and transcripts were listened to and read several times to provide total
familiarity with the data;
• initial themes were highlighted from the interviews from the first three pupil/parent
sets (over thirty interviews);
• all interviews were searched for these themes and any others which seemed pertinent
in individual cases.
• initial themes were refined and those which prevailed were checked for consistency
across the remaining interviews
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Analysis of stories
Between seven and ten stories were generated by each parent/pupil set giving a total of over
one hundred stories. These co‐created stories were analysed with respect to whether they
reflected pupils’ behavioural, emotional and social issues as identified by parents and teachers,
and their relationships with siblings, with classmates, and with parent/s. Common themes were
elicited across the stories.
Parents, Story Links teachers, and the pupils themselves were asked to indicate a story that had
particularly engaged the pupil. While all stories were analysed, there was a focus on these
selected stories as they had had a particular emotional resonance for participants and hence
related to the areas of investigation.
Individual pupil profiles
Two individual pupil profiles were written drawing on the whole range of quantitative and
qualitative data gathered for these two pupils. These were the first two pupil/parent sets to
complete the Story Links programme. The analysis and writing of these two in‐depth profiles
informed the identification of the initial thematic headings for the cross‐case qualitative data
analysis.
2.2.4 Validity
Several approaches to ensuring validity were employed, as outlined below.
Accuracy and consistency and fairness in data‐gathering and reporting
First every effort was made to check the accuracy and meaning of participant’s perspectives
and where there was discrepancy this has been noted. Drafts of the individual pupil profiles
were sent to the relevant Story Links teachers and their views sought on the accuracy of the
portrayals.
Fairness in reporting
Secondly, in selecting and representing participants’ perspectives, I tried to be fair, choosing
neither over‐dramatic quotations to make a point nor those which would represent participants
experience unfairly.
Triangulation
Thirdly, three strategies of triangulation were used in the analysis of the data to enhance its
validity: method triangulation, source triangulation and researcher triangulation. The results of
the classteachers’ SDQ questionnaires were cross‐checked with data gained from the semi‐
structured interviews with pupils, parents, TAs and Story Links teachers (method triangulation).
Data from teachers, parents and pupils were compared and contrasted (source triangulation).
The principal researcher‘s interview questions and a sample of her interpretations were checked
by an external expert evaluator for undue bias and consistency (researcher triangulation) as
outlined in the following section.
Monitoring subjectivity
Fourthly, particular attention was given to monitoring subjectivity and potential bias. The
principal researcher in this evaluation both developed the Story Links model and trained the
Story Links teachers. Consequently it was a priority in the methodology to have a mechanism
that monitored the influence and subjectivity of the researcher in the data collection and
12
analysis. For any qualitative researcher, familiarity with or engagement in the field under
scrutiny has the ability to either enhance the understanding of the topic under investigation
(Simons 2009) or to predispose the researcher to seeking positive results. In conducting this
evaluation, I took the following steps to minimise potential bias relating to my position as the
person who both developed the model and led the training:
i) I have aspired to impartiality in the collection and analysis of the data throughout.
ii) All interviews were audio‐digitally recorded and the majority were transcribed by an external
agency.
iii) Data from the interpretation of the qualitative interviews was triangulated with data from
the quantitative SDQ data and the Likert rating scaling of parents and teachers views.
iv) A leading academic in the field of qualitative research and evaluation (Helen Simons,
Southampton University) acted as an external expert evaluator both to oversee the design,
conduct and analysis of the evaluation and to monitor my subjectivity. This, she did in the
following ways:
• listening to the audio recording of sample initial interviews to monitor the impartiality
of the questioning of the principal researcher;
• conducting a thematic analysis of all the data (qualitative data, quantitative data and
stories) for two pupil/parent sets and then comparing interpretative results with those
of the principal researcher;
• reading through the final report to ensure that the written analysis and conclusions
were appropriately drawn from the data.
It is also important to note the positive benefits of having a researcher with extensive
experience of working with vulnerable pupils and also a deep knowledge of the programme
under investigation. In this case my intimate knowledge of Story Links meant that teachers were
keen to discuss what can be quite challenging work with parents and vulnerable pupils. My
experience of working with parents and pupils with BESDs also helped me to formulate
appropriate research questions and to engage empathically with the pupils and parents, some of
whom can easily feel uncomfortable in a formal educational environment.
2.2.5 Ethics
The evaluation was conducted in accordance with the professional ethics of the British
Educational Research Association (BERA). Schools were informed that researchers would adhere
to these codes of ethics and follow the specific principles of procedures noted below in relation
to confidentiality, anonymity, informed consent and publication.
Ethical principles of procedure
The senior management teams at the seven schools participating in the evaluation were sent a
letter with an outline of the Story Links programme; the focus of the evaluation and implications
for schools; and the code of ethics and confidentiality (see Appendix 3).
13
Parents’ permission was sought and given for the use of data relating to themselves and their
children at the outset. Parents were informed that they and their children could withdraw from
the evaluation at any time and this decision would be respected. It would not affect the
completion of delivery of the Story Links programme.
Pupils’ permission was sought and given for their stories and comments to be used in ‘an
experiment to see if this programme is useful for you and your parents, and to help us decide
whether it would be useful to set it up for other children.’
Permission was sought and given by all interviewees to record interviews. They were told that
they could request that the recording be stopped at any time and that if they said something
that they later wished to have removed, this data would be deleted.
Transcription of interviews was undertaken by an external professional transcriber who signed a
statement of confidentiality and an agreement to delete all electronic files once the
transcriptions had been delivered. In order to facilitate the exchange of data between the
researchers and the external transcriber, an internet storage facility was set up and this was
password protected.
To offer some protection of privacy names of all persons interviewed in the evaluation have
been changed and schools are not named. In selecting quotations to use in the findings, care
was taken to avoid using statements reported by others that might be stigmatising or offensive.
Parents and school professionals were informed of these procedures and the purpose of the
evaluation before the initial interviews and reminded of them at the end.
2.2.6 Presentation of findings
The findings are reported in a theme‐based narrative form. Emphasis has been given to allowing
parents, professionals and pupils to speak for themselves about their experience of the Story
Links intervention. Illustrative quotations from participants are preceded by a summary of the
key issues identified in the interview analysis.
In reporting the findings, sometimes only one or two quotations are given to support a point
although there are more in the database. This method is used for ease of reporting and
readability. In instances when one person said something particularly significant, this has been
included and the uniqueness of the response indicated.
2.3 The target group
Pupils were selected for inclusion in the evaluation on two criteria:
• they were at risk of exclusion due to behavioural, emotional or social difficulties (BESDs)
• and at least one year behind the reading age (for accuracy and/or comprehension) of
their peers.
The first 12 pupil/parents sets to complete the ten‐week programme were selected for the
evaluation. These were drawn from seven schools and involved ten Story Links teachers.
Another two parent/pupil sets were initially selected and took part in the pre‐evaluation but are
14
not included in the final evaluation as one did not complete the intervention in the time frame
due to illness and the other parent was unable to maintain regular attendance.
The 12 sets of parents consisted of 10 mothers, one couple (mother and father) and one female
foster carer. Four of the pupils had at least one biological parent who was illiterate. Of the
parents who attended sessions, two of the parents were illiterate and a further two described
themselves as ‘dyslexic’2.
2.3.1 Gender, age and special needs of the pupils
The pupil group consisted of nine boys and three girls between 7 and 10 years of age and all
were on the SEN register for BESDs and poor literacy. All, except two, had a history of being
excluded from a mainstream school or withdrawn from the classroom because of challenging
behaviour. Of the two pupils who had not been excluded from school or the classroom, one self‐
harmed and would self‐exclude when she was upset and the other was a Looked After Child for
whom the main concern was his considerable attention difficulties in the classroom. Eight out of
the twelve of the pupils scored below the baseline of 6.01 years on the NARA (Neale Analysis of
Reading Assessment) for both accuracy and comprehension at the start of the intervention.
Two pupils were at a special school having been previously excluded from mainstream. Both had
a dual diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autistic Spectrum
Conditions (ASC) named on their statement of special needs. Consideration was given as to the
appropriateness of including these pupils given their autistic tendencies. However, the
classteacher, who taught both of these pupils, and their parents thought their issues related
more to the ADHD aspect of their diagnosis than their autistic tendencies. It was therefore
decided to include them in the target group.
2.3.2 Family context & ethnic background
Only a third of the pupils lived with both their biological parents; five lived with a single mother,
two pupils had a step‐father; and one pupil was in long‐term foster care. All pupils in the study
were white apart from one who was of mixed English/African heritage and in foster care with a
white family.
2.3.3 Family literacy and behavioural difficulties
One‐third of the pupils’ fathers were illiterate and one of the step‐fathers could not read
English. One mother was illiterate and another had very poor literacy. In four of the families the
pupil had older siblings with literacy difficulties. As well as family patterns of literacy there were
some family patterns regarding behavioural difficulties and in discussing their child’s issues
several parents mentioned the behavioural difficulties of siblings.
2.3.4 A vulnerable target group with low self‐esteem
It is clear from the above that the pupil target group was highly individualistic and represents
some of the most vulnerable pupils in our schools. The majority of the group not only displayed
challenging behaviours and extreme emotional anxiety but were also failing to progress with

1. Dyslexia is referred to in inverted commas as, while it is a word in common use, there is doubt amongst many researchers (Elliot
& Gibbs 2008) in the field of reading development as to whether it is a meaningful term. In this paper the generic terms of ‘poor
literacy’ or ‘reading difficulties’ are used.
15
learning in the basic area of literacy. Pupil’s low self‐esteem was identified by both parents and
teachers as one of the major factors impeding their learning. The following comments were
typical of the group:,
He’s got really low self‐esteem – that’s his biggest problem... he doesn't
even bother trying, he just says the ‘I can’ts’. John’s classteacher
‘He still has little confidence... if there’s something that he’s got to try
and do himself... he does struggle quite hard with that.’ Pete’s Mum
2.3.5 Pupils’ presenting behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESDs)
As mentioned above all the pupils in the programme were on the SEN register for BESDs and all
but two had recently been excluded from the classroom, playground or the school because of
challenging behaviour. Of the two who had not, one would self‐exclude when she was upset at
home and the other was a Looked After Child (LAC) whose main difficulty was inattention in the
classroom.
The majority of the pupil group presented ‘acting out’ behaviours although some also presented
concerning ‘acting in’ behaviours.
‘Acting out’ behaviours included:
• Irritating and seeking attention from other children including fiddling, poking and
throwing things at other children.
• Disrupting the learning of peers including constantly calling out, whistling, singing, loud
wailing in the classroom.
• Aggression towards peers including frequent fights in the playground, attacking other
children and needing to be restrained.
• Aggression towards adults including shouting and swearing.
• Temper outbursts sometimes requiring restraint.
• General non‐compliance: such as refusing to work in classroom, running out of school,
spoiling printed books.
‘Acting in’ behaviours exhibited by four of the pupils included:
• Self‐harming including pulling out own hair resulting in partial baldness (2 pupils),
scratching face/arms (1 pupil), banging head on hard objects and threatening to jump
off high places to kill himself (1 pupil).
• Acute emotional distress including crying, hiding under tables or in cupboards.
• School phobia (1 pupil).
The BESDs of the pupils created particular issues for the teachers and the schools as these
teachers explain:
Just about every teacher that’s taught him has said that for whatever
reason they’ve found him one of the hardest to deal with. Ed’s SENCO
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He’s very disruptive of other people’s learning and takes very little
responsibility for his actions...a complete nightmare [in the playground],
lots of fights, lots of falling out which often leads then to him coming in
really angry off the playground into starting lessons. John’s classteacher
Many of the parents also confessed that they often found their children’s behaviour ‘hard work’:
‘I do find it very hard. I find him a 24/7 child, yeah, definitely.’ (Pete’s Mum); ‘His behaviour is
very collapsing, it’s either collapsing or aggressive’ (Mark’s Mum)
(See table in Appendix 6: for details of individual pupils’ presenting issues and family contexts.)
2.3.6 Parental attendance
All parents of the pupil target group attended at least seven of the ten sessions; four attended
all and four only missed one. Medical appointments or bad weather were the reasons given for
most of the missing sessions. Given that many of these parents had not had regular or positive
contact with the school in the past, this level of attendance was remarkably good. (See para
4.4.1 for more details on attendance)
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Chapter 3. Presentation of Findings: Two Pupil Profiles
3.1 Individual Pupil Profile A: John
3.1.1 Summary
John was a nine year old living with his mother who was disabled and referred to John as her
carer. He was often sent home at lunchtime because of his aggressive behaviour in the
playground and challenging behaviours in the classroom. He was a non‐reader and rarely
focused on educational tasks. Contrary to expectation, during the Story Links intervention his
mother began to engage with the school in a positive manner and also started to hear John read
at home.
3.1.2 Background and presenting issues
John attended a mainstream school and was on the SEN register at School Action Plus for both
BESDs and literacy difficulties. His reading age was less than 6.01 years (NARA) at the start of the
Story links intervention and he was identified by the school as being at high risk of exclusion
because of his aggressive behaviour.
His classteacher described him as ‘very disruptive of other people’s learning’ in the classroom
and said that he did not have any close friends in the class. When the school was asked to name
a child at risk of exclusion John’s name immediately came up. His main behavioural issues were
in the playground where his classteacher described him as ‘a complete nightmare’, There were
‘lots of fights, lots of falling out’ which often led ‘to him coming in really angry from the
playground at the start of lessons.’ In fact John had been sent home at lunch time for the
previous half‐term because of his aggressive behaviour in the playground. He had attended a
nurture group four days a week for the eighteen months prior to the intervention as the school
felt that that his behavioural issues had to be addressed ‘before they could tackle his learning
difficulties.’
John’s parents were separated and he lived alone with his mother. His father was illiterate and
his mother described herself as ‘dyslexic’. He had a teenage brother and sister neither of whom
lived at home: his sister had been diagnosed with ADHD and lived in sheltered housing and his
older brother had behavioural difficulties. John visited his father at weekends or in the holidays.
Mum spent quite a lot of time looking after her dogs and horses as well as doing charity work.
In her initial interview John’s mother said that John would ‘quite happily trundle off and cook
dinner and do the washing and... anything else that he felt was needed to be done’. However,
she added that he also had ‘a very short temper and he will retaliate...he can go too far and then
it turns into war’ but that despite this “no matter what frame of mind he’s in he would always
look after me.” These two aspects of John, the young conscientious carer and the rebellious
‘difficult’ boy were summed up in his mother’s statement: ‘when he’s focused he’s fantastic‐ he
can do anything‐ but the minute he’s not, he’s gone off into mischief and whatever John wants
to do in John’s world.’
3.1.3 John’s and his mother’s attitude to school
John said that he didn’t like being at school…
18
because I like being, spending time with my mum and my dad. When we
come to school they always go out and they don’t come back and I have
to go up the play centre and then I only get to spend time [with them] at
night time.
The only thing he did like about school was when he could play football at lunchtime. He said
that his behaviour in school was ‘not very good’. Literacy was his least favourite thing to do in
school and he thought his reading was ‘not very good... because I haven’t been reading for ages’
either at home or school. He didn’t like to read in school ‘because I don’t know what I’m doing’.
Mum said that she hardly ever came into the school because of her disability, which meant she
had to use a walking frame, and, given that they lived very close to the school, John could walk
home on his own. John’s classteacher said that she had seen Mum ‘rarely, only 3 or 4 times over
the year’ and the Story Links teacher indicated that ‘the school thought Mum would be very
hard to engage’. John himself had worried whether his Mum would be able to make it and had
suggested that his dad might come if she couldn’t, adding that ‘my dad hasn’t ever been to my
school.’
In fact, Mum readily agreed to the intervention and punctually attended every one of the ten
sessions. The Story Links teacher reported that she proved to be ‘very eager, surprisingly eager...
the school is quite shocked that she’s actually turning up religiously and is very committed.’
3.1.4 The story character as a projection of the child’s behavioural and emotional issues
Here is a story co‐created in the third Story Links session that seems to reflect something of
John’s emotional issues related to being a young carer and also his experience of having his
mother come into school to support him:
Bo the Elephant was stroppy and

used to cry because he had to find
food on his own. He walked for miles
and miles, digging at the ground and
sniffing at the tree... (then) his
keeper came in his lorry with
a big box. The box was full of sticky
buns which they ate together. So, Bo
knew now that... he didn’t have to get stroppy and cry, trying to find food on his
own. His keeper would look after him well.
John himself provided the first line of the story: ‘Bo the Elephant was stroppy and used to cry
because he had to find food on his own’. Like Bo, John could also be stroppy and, as his teacher
reported, he seemed to be continuously on the move in the classroom:
19
He fiddles, he pokes, he's up and about... he’ll take someone else’s seat
or he will take someone else’s ruler or he’ll say, ‘I need to go and
sharpen my pencil’ via everybody else in the classroom. It’s little stuff
but constant...he's always wanting attention from other people and
unfortunately, by doing that he irritates them.
The Story Links teacher was surprised by John’s wanting to take the lead with the stories as she
had planned to do this, possibly with input from mother as suggested in the training. It seemed
that John was unconsciously taking the adult position here as he often did at home in his role as
a young carer. However, just as Bo is in need of some looking after and is very happy when his
‘keeper’ arrives with a box of sticky buns that they can ‘eat together’, John seemed very happy
that his mother turned up weekly for the sessions –contrary to his negative expectations shared
in the initial interview. Despite his poor attention and behaviour in the classroom, John’s Story
Links teacher reported that in the Story Links sessions he worked ‘perfectly...his behaviour has
been never a problem, he’s really enjoyed it.’ Just as Bo the elephant was happy when his
keeper arrived with his favourite food, likewise it seems that John didn’t have to ‘get stroppy’ in
the Story Links sessions but could experience being nurtured through the activity of sharing
stories with his mother. It was clear that Mum had also enjoyed sharing the ‘feast’ of story‐
making describing it as ‘fantastic’ and ‘nice to look forward to’.
3.1.5 The use of story to reflect on behaviour patterns
Reflecting on the overall themes in the stories the Story Links teacher pointed out that six out of
the nine stories created involved ‘a main character and friend’ who were ‘good together and
were bad together.’ Here is another story to illustrate:
George the Goat
George the Goat had a friend called Harry. They got on well. They ate grass
together, they ran around together and they got into trouble together.
They used to eat things that they shouldn’t eat – like washing. Eating washing
made them feel ill. They would get tummy ache. This made them very sad.
They had to go to the vet, but they didn’t want to go.
The man came in a lorry to take them to the vet. They put their head down and
their horns out and chased him away. “We will stop eating washing” they said. This
was hard because they had got so used to eating washing. It was hard because
people still put their washing out.
They just couldn’t stop themselves eating other people’s washing. This made them
sad as well. What could they do?
The Story Links teacher thought this story was particular pertinent for John as ‘it was evidence
that it was very hard for him to stop doing naughty things because he just couldn’t stop
20
himself... I think it’s about him just not being able to behave, just always getting into trouble,
always ending up being naughty.’
It was John who completed the story line with ‘They just couldn’t stop themselves eating other
people’s washing’ and the Story Links teacher had added ‘This made them sad as well. What could
they do?’. In this way the teacher was able to reflect the feeling that behaving badly can bring up
feelings of regret while provided a ‘resting place’ for the story which included the possibility that
there might be another way to do things.
3.1.6 John’s engagement with the story metaphor and his emotional literacy
According to the Story Links teacher, John’s Mum did not really reflect on the stories or
contribute to the initial ideas but rather it was John who ‘would come in having thought about
it...’
Mum described how John would talk about the stories between sessions and started to include
‘feeling words’ as modelled by the Story Links teacher. She thought that the development of this
new emotional vocabulary had ‘made him more aware that people would have feelings about
everything. So that’s I think what made the difference to him. It was an enlightenment for him
really.’ She gave an example of a time when they were out walking their dogs and John had
started to make up a story for the next session:
He came up with this huge story about the dogs and everything. It must
have gone on for about an hour. Most of it did come from him. And then
he was like ‘and X (Story Links teacher) will say...’. That was really funny
because then he was like, ‘Oh feelings’, and suddenly the dogs that he
has he gets really cross with because they bark all the time. He was like
‘Oh they’ve got feelings’, and then it took a whole different light on
things. And he would be, ‘Why are they barking’” rather than, ‘Oh, the
dogs are barking.’ And we went to why and how did the dogs feel?
...they were angry, they were frightened. And he went through all these
different feelings that he didn’t really come up with before.
She finished by saying that when he came into the next session the story changed ‘because it
went round all of us’ but John appeared to have been fine with that. At home John and Mum
had worked together sticking photos of their dogs to a copy of the story.
3.1.7 A mutually enjoyable activity
It was clear that the sessions had been fun for both parent and pupil. John said that he had
‘really enjoyed’ the sessions and Mum mentioned several times how much she had ‘enjoyed’ the
sessions and that there had often been laughter as they created the stories. She thought this
lightness had also helped John to engage with the reading:
It’s not serious and we all laugh, because X does this, and they say this
and we all laugh. So it’s not serious, ‘you’re in trouble, you can’t read...
[but] ‘we need to help you’, it’s all very light. And that’s made a big
difference to him.
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3.1.8 Impact on John’s reading pattern at home
Prior to the intervention, according to Mum, John used to read to her when she was in bed
because of her disability.
Unfortunately I’ve run out of power at about half past eight or nine
o’clock so I’m always in bed by then anyway. So it means that he’s
allowed to come in my room for 10 minutes and read.
This was slightly at odds with John’s version who said that he ‘didn’t read at all’ at home before
the Story Links programme. He said it was difficult as ‘Mum always used to stop reading it
because (of) the dogs ‐ we’ve got two dogs and they always bark and play.’
However in the post interviews both agreed that he had been reading at home every day while
Mum was still up. There had also been a shift in who initiated the reading sessions ‐ from Mum
to John.
We made time to do it. And I said to John ‘Right we’re going to do the
reading now’. But as it got on John would be ‘I’m reading no’”. So, it
wasn’t necessarily convenient to do the reading.
(Researcher) So, he said when he wanted to read?
Yes, rather than me making time for it and prompting him to say ‘Right
we’re doing it now’, he would be more interested ‘I want to do reading, I
want to do reading now.’‐ which wasn’t always the right timing. At the
end it was causing a bit of a problem...because he wanted to do things
when there was other things on the go and you can’t stop cooking and
things like that. And he was, especially at breakfast time and dinnertime
he was like ‘I want to read now.’
This had resulted in some conflict at times. Mum said that if she couldn’t stop to hear him read
‘then he’d be cross because he wanted it then.’ She then described an argument in which their
last story ‘got ripped in half because he wanted to read and I was doing breakfast and dogs and
everything else...‘ John also mentioned this argument but gave a slightly different perspective
saying that it was because she didn’t give him ‘time to work out difficult words’ and that ‘every
time I read it and then I just wait, and then she reads it out for me...I want to read it myself’.
However, Mum thought that the argument was still ‘very positive anyway because we’d gone
from making time (for reading), to him wanting to do it... “I need to do it, I need to read”....that
was really good.’
Despite the argument John said he would still like to continue reading with his Mum at home
because ‘I really like to get used to reading. So I have to get a job. And so if I don’t read, I can’t
read, I can’t get a job.’
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According to his mother what contributed to this change of heart in John’s reading the Story
Links stories at home rather than ones he would choose from the library was ‘the fact that he’s
put the input in ‐ that made a big difference.’
Despite her dyslexia, Mum had clearly made quite an effort to support John during the
intervention. She had bought lots of different coloured highlighters and underlined the words
that John could read. Then when he said he didn’t know the word the next time, she could point
out that he had previously read them... At first this worked as John ‘really really looked’ at the
words but then she found that ‘it wasn’t quite the right system because he felt that, (once), by
the end of the week the lines were putting him off.’
3.1.9 Impact of work completed at home on school’s expectations of John
Several weeks into the Story Links intervention Mum sent in some work that she had done with
John at home. She had been shocked when she was shown his writing in school and said that it
was ‘terrible compared with what he writes at home’. The handwriting in his home note book,
according to the Story Links teacher, was ‘really good’ compared to the handwriting in his school
book which she described as ‘dire, almost illegible’. She said that this
…kind of blew his cover a little bit... because his teacher didn’t really
realise that he was capable of that...I think that was possibly part of the
catalyst for change; that the class teacher realised he could do much
better
It was evident from his class literacy book that the presentation of his work had improved
considerably after bringing in this writing from home. While a lot of the writing in John’s home
booklet was copying, the following story appeared to be written by John himself:
Little Tiger
Little Tiger wouldn’t let Mummy Tiger clean his face and wouldn’t listen to his
bedtime story. One night Mummy Tiger lost her temper and Little Tiger said ‘Don’t
want to go to bed’.
Mummy Tiger roared, ‘Alright you can stay up at night then.’
Little Tiger (indecipherable) cook something good, before Mummy Tiger can
change her mind. (indecipherable) before Mummy Tiger changes her mind.
It seems that John had instinctively copied the Story Links model of using story as a container for
difficult feelings in this writing. The story clearly reflects the relational dynamic between John
and his Mum, with the little tiger being difficult, arguing with his Mummy but also doing the
household chores.
3.1.10 Change of Parent‐School Relationship on John
John’s Mum described her relationship with the school before the Story Links programme as
‘horrible, all the time’ and that ‘previously it was when something went wrong...the only
23
interaction is “John’s been bad, this has happened”.’ However, she felt that the Story Links
programme had turned this around and that the focus on reading rather than on bad behaviour
had made a big difference to her contact with the school:
This has been sort of more positive. Now it’s nice to look forward to
coming in, in the afternoon, we all sit down ‐we talk about bits and
pieces, and John glows and picks up his reading and is eager to tell us his
story.
3.1.11 Including Dad
John had regular contact with his Dad but as mentioned above Dad had had no contact with the
school at all before the Story Links programme. Mum said that Dad’s poor literacy meant that he
would struggle to read John’s stories. Consequently John did not read to his dad when he visited
him at weekends. Although not directly involved with the programme, John’s Dad was
mentioned by John, both at the start and at the end of the intervention, for his reason for
wanting to be able to read. Initially John said he would like to get better at reading ‘because it
will make me used to reading when my Dad gives me stuff to read.’ In the final interview he
referred obliquely to his father’s poor literacy when asked if he thought Story Links would be
good for other pupils:
I think it is. It’s good because you can make your children, if your dad
can’t read, and you’re going somewhere, you can at least read it for him.
And when you go on holiday you know where you’re going and you can
read the map.
In fact while the Story Links programme was running John’s father did come into school with his
mother for the first time for a discussion about his progress.
3.1.12 Impact on John’s self‐esteem
John’s self‐esteem, which his mother related to his attitude to reading, really, really improved
through this group. ‘He just seems a lot more confident in himself.’ She described the Story Links
sessions as having been ‘fantastic’ but with ‘the reading side being a very small part of it’. While
they had ‘achieved a lot with the reading' she thought it was his increased self‐esteem from the
encouragement everyone had given him that had mostly been affected. However she added
that his low self‐esteem was ‘part and parcel of his reading in the first place.’
Whereas his classteacher had previously referred to his frequent use of ‘I can’t’ in the
classroom, the Story Links teacher said that John had participated fully in the sessions and had
willingly read his story to the group each week. She said that when he came into the sessions ‘he
would very clearly have the idea... he very much took the responsibility.’ She added that ‘he’s
very eager... he always wants to carry on...he obviously loves it, because it’s something he can
achieve I suppose.’ She added that because of his engagement with the reading and story‐
making ‘he got a lot of encouragement and praise from us.’ She had noticed that previously he
had found it hard to accept praise but as the sessions progressed ‘he was able to accept that
more.’
24
3.1.13 Impact on John’s reading and attitude to learning in school
Prior to the Story Links programme John did not register on the NARA for either accuracy or
comprehension giving him a reading age of less than 6.01 years. When tested 12 weeks later
after the intervention, he registered on the scale for comprehension with a score of 6.01 years
although he continued to score less than 6.01 years for accuracy.
While the NARA indicated only a very minimal increase in his reading skills, all the adults
involved and John himself felt that he had started to engage more positively with the activity of
reading. The Story Links teacher, although she had previously worked with John in play therapy,
had not realised his reading was so poor and had been ‘shocked’ to discover John could ‘just
read two letter words’. She reported that during the sessions John ‘became more interested in
being able to read, he became much more enthusiastic about wanting to read (the story)...and
very pleased that he could read it.’ She felt that sometimes there was an issue of ‘stopping Mum
expecting too much from him in terms of reading.’ She referred to a ‘kind of alphabet chart with
pictures’ created at home and the system of highlighting words, mentioned by Mum above, that
had got rather complicated.
John himself in his initial interview described himself as ‘not very good at reading’ saying that
this was because he hadn’t ‘been reading for ages.’ He also said that he felt ‘not very happy’ if
he had to read in class ‘because I don’t know what I’m doing.’ However, in his final interview
John said that he had ‘really liked’ the sessions and thought that they were making him ‘really
good (at) reading now’ but added that he needed ‘more of the reading. He thought he had
improved because ‘when I go wrong they help me and then I get used to it‐ then, I know.’ He
said that he had called several of his characters by the same name ‘George’ as this was a word
that he could now read.
John’s classteacher prior to the intervention said that he would ‘sit and flick through a book’ but
that he was not actually reading it ‐ he was ‘just sort of dozing’. However, after the intervention
she said that while John was still quite disruptive in maths he had ‘become a lot better in
literacy’. When she worked with his small reading group, she said that he would now say ‘I’d like
to read.’ However, she did add that ‘within three words he cannot cope’ and as the task was
usually one relating to comprehension she would then offer to ‘read it out for him ’.
His classteacher also brought along some samples of unaided writing completed in class by John
during the Story Links intervention, saying ‘he is coming in to work, [muffled] and this [unaided
writing sample] is much, much better’. The samples indicated that he had increased the amount
he was writing and had taken on board teaching points on punctuation.
The TA reported that in the two 20 min sessions during the week where there was time for John
to ‘have a go’ at unknown words John had ‘loved’ reading the stories. She said he had still used a
lot of ‘guesswork’ but that ‘occasionally he self‐corrected himself on certain words and he knew
the key words.
3.1.14 Mum’s confidence to support John’s reading skills
Mum was most concerned that Story Links had ended as it seemed to have helped John so
much. She stressed that although she was keen to help John with his reading she was worried
that she didn’t have the proper skills saying that her older children learnt with Letter Land but
that she didn’t understand the phonetic approach used with John. She also said that as ‘he was
having lots of help at school there was never any reason for me to think that he wasn’t getting
25
anywhere, ’ and that she found it ‘really hard to understand that we’ve got to this year in his
schooling, before we’ve flagged up a huge problem.’ She was very concerned that as his literacy
difficulties had now been clearly identified that proper support should be put in place.
3.1.15 Impact on John’s behaviour in school
According to his TA, John’s behaviour in both the main Story Links sessions and in the two
weekly reading sessions was ‘perfect’. She thought one story they had created about a horse
that had to learn to stop kicking younger horses had particularly helped John to think about his
behaviour. This was in significant contrast to his general behaviour in and around school which
was still very poor. He had commented on this in his initial interview saying it was ‘not very
good’ because he ‘messed around’ and in the final interview he said it was ‘the same really’...
His TA commented that thought the main benefit of the Story Links programme for John had
been ‘the caring side of it... to have some quality time; seeing him with his mum that she had to
listen to him maybe.’
Both the classteacher and the TA reported that John continued to be excessively attention‐
seeking in class. However, the Goodman’ SDQ completed by his classteacher, shown in figure 1,
indicated a reduction in his hyperactivity and attentional difficulties as well as his difficulties in
getting along with other children over the course of the Story Links programme.
Goodman’s SDQ results Pre‐intervention Post‐intervention

for John (completed by
classteacher)
Score Banding Score Banding
Overall stress 25 Very high 18 High
Emotional distress 4 Slightly raised 2 Close to average
Behavioural difficulties 7 Very high 6 Very high
Hyperactivity and
10 Very high 8 High
attentional difficulties
Difficulties getting along
4 Slightly raised 2 Close to average
with other children
Impact of any difficulties
on the child's learning 3 Very high 3 Very high
environment

Figure 1: Goodman's SDQ results for John (pupil profile A)
John had been excluded from the playground about half the time during the 10 week
intervention whereas prior to the Story Links programme he had been sent home every day at
lunchtime. However the SDQ scores also indicate that the impact of John’s difficulties on his
learning environment continued to be a cause for concern.
26
Too close to home‐ the behaviour reward system
The target set for John in the behaviour reward part of the programme, ‘not to distract others
and for him to make his teacher happy, or to make the adult that he was working with happy.’
did not really work. Expecting John to make the adult ‘happy’ appears to have paralleled the
situation at home where John, as a young carer was required to look after his mother needs a
lot of the time. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the classteacher reported that this behaviour reward
programme ‘didn’t make any difference’. The Story Links teacher thought she may not have
explained too well, but John had not really understood the target set by his classteacher as she
overheard him say: ‘Oh I can get four warnings but I can still make her happy.’ The Story Links
teacher said she intended to set the behaviour chart up clearly at the beginning when using
Story Links with other pupils in future.
While the Goodman’s SDQ, in figure 1, showed that John’s Overall Stress level (see 2.2.1 for how
this is calculated) was significantly reduced during the period of the intervention both the SDQ
and the interview data indicated that the reason for this was a reduction in John’s emotional
distress and attentional difficulties rather than a significant improvement in his behaviour.
3.1.16 The TA as a secure attachment figure for John
John had developed a good relationship with the Story Links TA and worked well in the 2 x 20
min sessions with her during the week. The Story Links teacher said the TA had ‘felt very
responsible and had a very close relationship with this piece of work’. This had clearly been
communicated to John who said that ‘Aaron’s Mum (TA) probably wants to do more because
she likes my book. The TA had enjoyed the sessions and said that there had never been any
problems in the 1:1 sessions with John; ‘he had always been very happy to come out and read to
her; he had worked very well; and actually ‘loves it’. She thought that it had given him a space
where he was ‘not under pressure with other people watching’. It seems that John had formed a
positive attachment relationship (Bomber, 2008) with Aaron’s Mum. However, this had
sometimes led to problems when he was in a teaching group led by Aaron’s Mum when he
would often compete for her undivided attention.
3.1.17 Conclusion
From the evidence in this profile of John it seems that the emotional containment provided by
the Story Links sessions had provided a positive learning environment for both John and his
mother who started to hear her son read regularly at home. The stories had clearly engaged and
reflected John’s internal emotional world and he became very keen to read them as the
programme progressed. Overall, John’s mother had found the sessions very beneficial, had
attended well and thought her relationship with the school had dramatically improved.
However, she was concerned about the programme finishing and what future support for her
son’s reading would be put in place.
While John’s father was not actively involved in the Story Links programme, he was a key factor
in motivating John to improve his reading. The Story Links programme appeared to have also
supported the development of a secure attachment relationship between John and his TA.
While both the Goodman’s SDQ and the interview data indicated that there had been a
significant reduction in John’s overall emotional stress levels, there remained serious concerns
from his classteacher about his general behaviour in school.
27
While John’s reading score on the NARA showed only a minimal improvement in comprehension
over the 12 weeks and he continued to score well below his peers, his self‐esteem and
confidence as a reader showed a marked improvement as did his attitude to learning in literacy
lessons.
3.2 Individual Pupil Profile B: Aaron
Summary
Aaron was a nine‐year old boy with a diagnosis of both ADHD and ASC who had recently
transferred to a special school (MLD). He had significant behaviour difficulties and was a non‐
reader. During the Story Links programme his reading and behaviour improved significantly and
both his parents became more involved in his learning.
The Story Links programme was delivered by a SEN support teacher who had spent some time
covering Aaron’s class the previous term.
3.2.1 Background and Presenting Issues
Nine year‐old Aaron had recently transferred from mainstream to a special school for pupils
with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) because of his severe behavioural difficulties and his
lack of progress in learning. The Story Links intervention began in the third term of his
placement at the special school. In his initial interview Aaron presented as rather immature for
his age and easily distracted by sounds and objects in the room. His reading age was less than
6.01 years on the NARA prior to the start of the Story Links programme.
After frequent exclusion from his previous mainstream school for behaviour difficulties, Aaron
eventually received a Statement of Special Educational Need when he was seven years old with
both ADHD and ASD named as his categories of need. However, his mother said that ‘in practice
it’s more attention deficit’. His classteacher seemed to agree saying, ‘it’s his behavioural side of
things... socially he can get on with other children, he’s quite happy to approach other people,
speak to other people, chat to them.’ Since being at the special school, his class placement had
alternated between ASD and non‐ASD groups. The Story Links teacher agreed with his
classteacher that his main problems were more related to behaviour than typical autistic type
behaviour and it is for this reason that Aaron was included in the cohort for evaluation. There
was some initial discussion as to whether Aaron’s autistic tendencies might affect his ability to
work with story metaphor. However, as will be seen below, this did not prove to be the case.
Family context and home learning prior to Story Links
Aaron’s parents had been separated for about four years and he lived mainly with his mother
and older sister, although he did stay with his dad a couple of nights in the week and alternate
weekends. His Mother mentioned in the course of the programme that the parental separation
may have had an impact on Aaron. His mother was the main point of contact with the school
and it was she who agreed to attend the Story Links sessions. Before the intervention the
classteacher described her relationship with Aaron’s parents as ‘mainly good’ and thought that
they probably supported him with reading at home but said this was primarily based on the
‘home‐school’ book as his mother rarely came into school and she had never met his father.
However, the classteacher’s view on how much reading happened at home contrasted with
what Aaron’s mother said ‐ she described herself as ‘a ‘bit naughty’ in that she rarely heard
28
Aaron read. 3 She said it would be ‘less than once a week – if that’ and added that ‘the last thing
you both want to do [when you get home] is just to sit down and do something that he feels is
like school.’ Mum didn’t know what Aaron did when he was at his dad’s but Aaron himself said
that he didn’t read to Dad when he stayed there.
Mother was prepared to do ‘anything that I think is going to help’ though she thought that there
‘will be times when he [Aaron] will find it quite difficult, I'm sure and it will all get too much.’ She
said she would make a ‘more concerted effort’ to hear Aaron read and speak to Aaron’s dad and
ask him to also ‘make an effort’.
Exclusion history and behavioural difficulties
From the moment he started, school had been difficult, according to his mother. He had been
excluded from his previous mainstream school more times than she could remember. ‘It was
quite frustrating to be honest ‐it was every day getting phone calls... to say he had done this and
done that and could I come and pick him up.’
Since attending the special school he had not been excluded though on occasions he had had to
be restrained and removed from the classroom to the ‘on‐call’4 room. In the pre‐intervention
meeting with his classteacher she described how if someone hurt him he would ‘hit back
harder’, that he easily got frustrated and would often ‘explode’. His mother, his class teachers
and the Story Links teacher all thought that Aaron’s anger outbursts seemed to relate to a need
to be in control. When he couldn’t control the TV channels at home his mother said ‘he'll storm
upstairs and bang a few doors.’
Many of his behavioural difficulties, according to his mother, were because of his low self‐
esteem. He needed help to ‘unlock whatever it is in his head’ that stopped him having a go at
learning tasks. She spoke of him ‘automatically putting this big barrier up, this huge mountain to
climb’ and noticed that if he didn’t get things quite right he got very embarrassed:
And then through the embarrassment he gets cross because he thinks
everyone’s laughing and they think he’s stupid. And then he’ll go that
little bit too far and you just can’t quite bring him back again and then
he’ll realise he’s done something wrong but he’s too cross and angry to
bring himself back.
3.2.2 Using the Stories to address emotional, social and behavioural issues
Nine stories were co‐created in the sessions and Dino the Dragon was the central character in all
of them. The other characters included a mother dragon, Mr Wing a teacher at dragon school
and some other young dragons. All the stories were powerful and clearly explored issues that
were pertinent for Aaron such as feeling angry, being worried or fed –up and the difficulties of
sharing with others. One story, Fireballs, was written following the mother’s observation that
Aaron had difficulty with turn‐taking and sharing with his sister at home. This story was
mentioned by the parent, the TA and the Story Links teacher as particularly significant in
reflecting Aaron’s emotional and behavioural issues. Here is the whole story:

3
(The term ‘naughty’ was also used by a couple of other parents in the pilot study to describe themselves in relation to not hearing
their child read).
4
A supervised Internal room to which pupils are removed when they cannot manage in the main classroom
29
Fireballs
(Story Links teacher) ‘Your turn, Dino,’ said Dino’s brother, Peter.
So Dino carefully made a smoke ring and tried to blow it so it would land on Peter’s
tail.
‘Yes… no… oh, so close… oh, I just missed!’
Peter and Dino laughed happily. Then Peter got ready to make his smoke ring.
‘No hang on, Peter!’ said Dino. ‘Let me just try one more time.’
‘No, Dino, it’s my turn!’ Peter stood up and gave Dino a shove. Suddenly Dino’s fire
box was red hot.
(Aaron) Red hot! Dino blew a big fire ball at Peter. Then Peter blew a big, little
fire ball at Dino. They kept on doing it until they blew the whole house up.
(Mother) Their mother came home from the shops.
‘What on earth has been going on? What have you done to my lovely home?’
(TA) Dino’s fire box was not red hot any more. He was worried and upset. He and
Peter looked at their mother and both said, ‘We’re really sorry. We had an
argument. A big argument.’
(Story Links teacher) Dino looked at his mother. She still looked angry. He looked
at Peter. He didn’t look angry anymore. Dino thought hard. What should he do
next?
(Aaron) Then their mother told Dino to go and do his flying lessons. Then their
mother said to Peter, ‘Go with Dino to flying lessons.’
30
(Mother) Their mother hoped they would work together nicely. While they were
away she got in touch with the builders and asked them to fix the house.
(TA) After lessons they said, ‘Let’s get a nice present for Mother to show her how
sorry we are.’
So they bought her a lovely big box of chocolates. Then they flew carefully home,
talking all the way.
(Story Links teacher) Dino said, ‘I wish I hadn’t blown that fireball at you.’
Peter said, ‘And I wish I hadn’t blown that fireball at you.’
Then Dino said, ‘Let’s promise to try not to blow a fireball again, even if we get
really cross.’
So they slapped their wings together and smiled at each other. Then they flew
home together.
In this story the Story Links teacher provided an engaging and pertinent opening to the story
that refers to the issue brought up by Aaron’s mother. By making the other dragon a brother
rather than a sister she avoids presenting a scene too close to Aaron’s actual experience. Her
contribution ‘Dino thought hard. What should he do next?’ provides a clear ‘bridge to change’ 5
and her final statement that begins ‘Let’s promise to try not to blow a fireball again...’ brings the
short story to a suitable resolution or ‘resting place’.
The Story Links teacher made some insightful reflections on the significance of this particular
story for Aaron:
‘ It was really interesting that he had the younger sibling also firing a
fireball back and the pair of them blowing the whole house up. I thought
that really expressed what Aaron feels when he loses his temper... that’s
what makes it so destructive because he kind of feels that ‘oh look I’ve
done it now’... and he can’t then bring himself back because he feels like
he’s blown it at that moment... I was really pleased that he was able to
express that idea of the effect of a temper tantrum...because at the
beginning of, in the first sessions I don’t think he had that understanding
of the consequences of the temper... and then the adults within the
group were able to kind of let him see that actually in real life someone
loses their temper and it might have negative repercussions but actually
life does go on and you can put things right.’
She pointed out that that many of the stories had similar ‘interesting little moments’ that
showed that ‘you could put stuff right.’ The issue of needing to be in control in the classroom

5
A ‘bridge to change’ is discussed in the training as a point in the story where the character has the opportunity to change their
habitual way of doing things
31
had been addressed by Mr Wing who was trying ‐at times with difficulty‐ to teach Dino to fly in a
couple of the stories. All the stories developed a particular dilemma before some sort of
resolution was reached. She felt that using ‘thinking hard’ as a ‘bridge to change’ had both
encouraged and reflected Aaron’s increasing capacity to think things through.
Aaron had refused to do pictures for his previous stories but for this one he did a graphic
illustration of a fireball using a computer graphics programme. After this week he continued to
produce a computer generated picture for the stories.
3.2.3 Parent’s reflection on the use of story metaphor to address emotional and behavioural
issues
His mother thought that the stories had helped Aaron to understand some of his emotional
issues and that the use of story characters meant the stories were ‘not obviously directed at
him’. In discussing the stories’ themes she said that ‘all of it rang true, certain little lessons in
there he understood really, which I think is good.’
The Story Links teacher reported that initially she had taken the lead in relating the story theme
to Aaron’s issues as for the mother ‘it was clearly quite a new thing’. However after a few
sessions this appeared to have changed:
There came a point when she suddenly saw what was happening, and...
she told me then one day ‘Oh, it would be really good if the stories were
about...’ and she gave me three suggestions of issues at home that she
wanted to address. And...I felt that she completely understood the idea
that within the story you could have the character having an issue or
doing something that would be unsafe.’
One of these issues was the sibling rivalry addressed in the Fireballs story above.
3.2.4 Impact on pupil’s learning and engagement in the sessions
Pre the Story Links programme, Aaron had said that he didn’t enjoy reading and that English was
his least favourite subject. However, post Story Links programme he described reading as
something he ‘really enjoyed’ and that he had found the sessions ‘good because...I like doing the
stories.’ In his post‐intervention interview Aaron appeared more focused than in the initial
interview and used the word ‘good’ six times to describe the Story Links sessions.
The Story Links teacher reported that Aaron’s behaviour had been ‘impeccable’ in the sessions
‘even when he has arrived upset/ angry about something’. Initially he would sit ‘really hunched
down... that thing he does when he’s a bit frightened, and you know, at the risk of expressing
himself or having a go’ and that at first ‘ it took a while for him to say anything at all’. However
this gradually changed until
By the last sessions he was happily engaged and relaxed, and smiling and
laughing about the plans we were making. As soon as it was his turn,
then he was in there with something and each time it was a slightly
bigger bit of the story. Story Links teacher
32
This increase in confidence was also commented on by his mother: ‘You know initially he was
like “Oh I don’t know”, but then he actually started coming up with his own ideas of how he
wanted the story to go.’
The TA who worked with Aaron during the week reported that he had worked well on his
reading and that he would ‘have a go at every word even if he’s not sure.’ This was clearly a shift
from his previous attitude to reading. She said Aaron had enjoyed the stories, had some really
good ideas and ‘loved the fact that his mother was here.’ She thought it had ‘made him feel a bit
special really.’
The Story Links teacher said Aaron had ‘willingly read the story to us each week, virtually
independently, just needing a couple of verbal prompts and reassurance’ and that ‘it wasn’t
remembering them, he actually read them.’ She had initially supported Aaron with his reading in
the sessions but after a few weeks his mother took over after ‘a little encouragement
beforehand.’
3.2.5 Reading and behaviour at home
Aaron’s mother said she had managed to hear Aaron read the stories twice a week apart from
one week when she only heard him once. She described his improvement as ‘phenomenal
really, even though I know on your scale it wasn’t particularly high.’ Before the intervention, she
said, he would ‘read’ by memorising stories and got very frustrated when asked to sound out
words. However, this had clearly changed:
It’s amazing; he’s really, sounding out quite big words sometimes and
just really having the confidence to have a go and enjoying the story. He
loves stories, but before he wanted you to read them to him whereas
now he’s quite happy to try to read it to you.’ Mother
She thought the Story Links work had ‘given him the confidence to have a go and try rather than
just looking at it and thinking that’s too difficult.’ His attitude to home‐work had also ‘definitely’
changed ‘because before he didn’t really want to do it and now he’s willing to do spellings ‐ and
you know he’s willing to read a book.’
In relation to his behaviour at home mother said that while ‘he still has his moments’ his
behaviour was ‘better than it was’. She thought he was ‘maturing’, seemed ‘calmer generally at
home’ and ‘a little bit more content.’
3.2.6 Including Dad
A particularly interesting aspect of the work with Aaron was how a copy of the story began to go
to Aaron’s father. As mentioned above Aaron did not read to his dad prior to the Story Links
programme. However, Aaron had started to take the story to his Dad’s at the weekend so the
Story Links teacher started to send two copies home, one for each of the parents. The Story
Links teacher then received a message ‘via mother’ from Aaron’s dad that ‘he was really pleased
about it and was glad that we were doing it.’ In the post‐intervention interview mother talked at
some length about how Dad had heard Aaron read the Story Links story twice a week and that it
had given them something to do together apart from playing on the X‐box. Mother thought
Aaron’s Dad had ‘quite enjoyed some of the stories that he came up with’ and that reading with
Aaron ‘meant that he (Dad) could feel a bit more included.’ The story appeared to have been
33
something of a link between the two estranged parents. In addition, soon after the Story Links
programme Aaron’s dad came along to the school for the first time to attend a social event.
3.2.7 Reading and behaviour in the classroom
Before the Story Links intervention Aaron’s classteacher said that he would settle at quiet
reading time ‘at a pinch’ but also talked about how easily he would ‘explode’. As the Story Links
intervention went over the summer break, Post intervention, his new classteacher ( there had
been a change of teacher for the last few weeks of the programme) reported that, ‘we never
have any problems with him going to read. He even volunteered in assembly the other day to go
up and read in front of assembly.’
The new classteacher said that Aaron still had definite behavioural issues but thought there had
been an improvement over the last few months: ‘From what I saw of him last year, he was
spending a lot of time sort of outside the class room [in the on‐call room], he was struggling
more and to be fair to him he’s spending a lot more time in the classroom [now]’.
When Aaron was tested on the Neale Assessment of Reading Analysis (NARA) before the Story
Links intervention, he failed to register on the scale giving him a reading age of less than 6.01
years (1st percentile) for both accuracy and comprehension. However, when he was tested 4
months later after the Story Links intervention, he registered on the scale with a reading age of
6.03 (1st percentile) for accuracy and 6:07 (3rd percentile) for comprehension. This indicates that
he was starting to develop some basic reading skills.
From the Goodman’s SDQ completed by Aaron’s class teacher (see figure 2) before and after the
intervention it is clear that his overall emotional anxiety was significantly lowered over the
period of the Story Links intervention. His concentration had improved and while his behavioural
difficulties still remained high, the measure indicates that these were not having such a negative
impact in the classroom.
Figure 2: Goodman's SDQ results for Aaron (pupil profile B)
Goodman’s SDQ results for Pre‐intervention Post‐intervention
Aaron (completed by
classteacher)
Score Banding Score Banding
Overall stress 21 Very high 14 Slightly raised
Emotional distress 4 Slghtly raised 0 Close to average
Behavioural difficulties 4 High 4 High
Hyperactivity and 5 close to average
7 Slightly raised
attentional difficulties
Difficulties getting along 6 Very high 5 high
with other children
Impact of child’s difficulties 2 High
6 Very high
on learning environment
34
3.2.8 Parental attendance & engagement in a ‘mutually enjoyable’ learning activity
Although the timing of the Story Links session interfered a little with her work day Aaron’s
mother attended all but one of the Story Links sessions. She sent a message to say that she had
a doctor’s appointment but was keen that the session went ahead as Aaron was ‘enjoying it so
much’ and in fact seemed to enjoy it more and more as the weeks passed.
She also said how, despite some initial reservations, she had really enjoyed the sessions:
‘I loved it actually, I think we all got a lot of enjoyment out of it... Giving
our little ideas in and writing it all down. So yeah I thoroughly enjoyed
it... initially you feel a little bit self‐conscious because you’re new and it’s
not something you’re used to but actually as time goes on it’s really
enjoyable, really good fun, and you’re there... and seeing him actually
get into it, kind of spurs you on I think... And then everyone sort of gets
a kick out of it and you can have a bit of a giggle.’
She appreciated getting to know some of the people working with Aaron and this had made her
‘feel better knowing, putting faces to names.’ Aaron, himself, said that he had really liked having
his mother come in and he had also enjoyed reading at home to both his Mum and Dad.
The Story Links teacher reported, it was nice to feel it was a positive experience for mother and
Aaron.’
3.2.9 Pupil’s engagement with story metaphor
The Story Links teacher observed that Aaron had been ‘perfectly capable of imagining a story’
despite his ASC diagnosis and admitted that to start with ‘it wasn’t necessarily obvious that he
would be capable of it.’ She added that while ‘clearly other children might have a bigger
imagination or more vivid kind of imagining’ she didn’t ‘have any worries about doing this again
with another child with ASC.’
3.2.10 Concluding remarks
The Story Links intervention had clearly succeeded in engaging Aaron’s parents in his learning.
While separated, they had both started to hear their son read on a regular basis and his father
had come into school for the first time soon after the Story Links programme ended. Aaron’s
attitude to reading in school and his general confidence had also shown a marked improvement
as had his behaviour both at home and school.
35
Chapter 4. Presentation of Findings: A CrossCase Thematic Analysis of the
Data
4.1 Impact on pupils’ emotional and social wellbeing
4.1.1 Impact on emotional anxiety evident in the main classroom
The results of the SDQ completed by classteachers pre and post intervention, shown in Figure 3,
clearly indicate a significant reduction in pupils’ emotional anxiety. Nine of the pupils registered
at above average levels of anxiety pre intervention, with seven of these registering at ‘very high’
levels of emotional anxiety. This correlates with information given by parents and teachers in
pre intervention interviews which revealed a high incidence of emotional anxiety in the group.
However, there was a significant improvement post‐intervention with eight of the nine who
were previously above average showing a reduction in emotional anxiety and of the six pupils
who scored ‘very high’ pre intervention, only two remained in this category post intervention.
Figure 3: SDQ Results for Impact of SLP on Pupils’ Emotional Anxiety
Key: 0‐3 = Close to average; 4= Slightly raised; 5= High; 6‐10 =Very High;
Specific pupil observations
The pupil, Ed, whose scores indicated most improvement for emotional anxiety had four siblings,
one of whom was severely disabled, and his mother was also busy running a smallholding.
Possibly for this pupil the undivided attention of his mother during the intervention had
particularly provided him with a much needed secure emotional base. Certainly his mother had
been amazed at the progress he had made, saying ‘I really, really didn’t expect one hour a day to
have this impact on his life and I’ve got nothing but praise for it.’
The two pupils who continued to score in the very high bracket post intervention were Fred and
Mark. The parents of these pupils, while they had attended well, were also the only ones not to
say they had positively enjoyed the Story Links sessions. The case of Fred, whose score did not
change and stayed in the ‘very high’ category, is discussed section 4.1.3 below.
36
The other pupil, Mark, had the highest reading score at the start of the programme and was the
only one of the twelve to say he ‘really enjoyed reading’ in his pre‐interview. He was also the
only pupil who was both able and preferred to read on his own at home. This may mean that
shared reading time was not the most appropriate means to support parent/child attachment
for this child. This pupil had a bald patch on his head at the beginning of the Story Links
programme because of pulling out his own hair. While the SDQ indicated only a small reduction
in his emotional anxiety, this self‐harming habit had stopped during the intervention with the
Story Links teacher reporting that ‘Mum actually interestingly enough said this week [that] his
hair has grown back now and he’s not pulling it out any more thank goodness.’ She also added
that ‘His demeanour and body language generally speaking... show much more confidence but
he does sometimes revert to other behaviour [such as] sucking’.
Pupils’ ease in Story Links sessions
All the pupils said they ‘really enjoyed’ (10/11) or ‘enjoyed’ (1/11) the sessions and no Story
Links teacher or parent reported pupils becoming emotionally distressed in the sessions. One
pupil, Harry, became very tearful when his mother failed to turn up without a reason but was
fine in the actual sessions. This sense of ease in sessions was significant as the target group was
selected because of their emotional and behavioural difficulties.
4.1.2 Impact on pupils’ emotional awareness
As Figure 3 shows, parents and teachers thought there had been an improvement in the
emotional awareness of all the pupils apart from one. The mother of this pupil thought her
daughter had already been very aware of her feelings and the feelings of others and therefore
there had been no change. Parents’ ratings show more differentiation than the teachers and this
is probably due to parents seeing their children for longer periods and in a range of different
situations.
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Figure 4: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Pupils' Emotional Awareness
Development of an Emotional Vocabulary
A number of parents commented on how their child’s emotional vocabulary had improved. In
one case this was attributed to the Story Links teacher’s frequent use of words to describe
feelings:
...because the feelings part was added by [Story Links teacher] every
time it made him more aware that people would have feelings about
everything. So that’s I think what made the difference to him. It was an
enlightenment for him really. John’s Mum
Following up this observation John’s Mum gave an example of how B himself explored a range
of feelings when taking their dogs out for a walk (see individual profile A)
In a second case the programme facilitated both awareness of an expression of emotions as
Pete’s Mum observed:
38
It helped him express himself more. And that’s really made a difference
now because now I can get more things out of him and he’s got more
aware of his emotions as well.
When asked in what ways she had noticed this, she replied:
Just that he didn’t realise how his behaviour does affect other children.
You know he wasn’t that aware really of what he was doing but of
course now‐I mean he’s not fantastic but he’s coming more and more
aware of it.
She mentioned how this emerging awareness of feelings had also been evident in Pete’s
contribution to some of the stories, pointing to a section in their co‐created Gordon the Gorilla
story. In this story a friend of Gordon’s had told him he was upset about something Gordon had
done. Pete’s Mum had been impressed by what he ‘came out with, what Pete actually said’,
which was:
Gordon said, “I am sorry about that. Why don’t you tell me how you
felt? It is not good to bottle feelings up. It is better to talk about them.’
In some cases, the impact of a growing emotional awareness was more subtle or indirect. For
example Fred’s Mum thought her son had started to talk about his feelings obliquely:
He’d have one day, it was an average school and one day it was a good
school. It would be what he was feeling I think, but he made it out to be
the school but I think it was actually aimed at him. Fred’s mum
Fred’s Story Links teacher also described Fred as ‘really thoughtful and reflective’ in sessions and
noticed he had started to use feeling words such as ‘angry’, ’sad’ or ‘upset’.
Pupils’ awareness of their own emotional states
Only two pupils were really able to verbalise their feelings in the post interview. Harry whose
behaviour had improved dramatically (see Harry’s story
was able to talk about how he ‘got scared easily‐ that’s why I go all panicky’.
And Ross, who was in foster care, appeared the most able to talk about his feelings. He had this
to say about his emotional experience of making up the stories: ‘You make your own story up
and I think it’s quite good and it’s exciting, it’s all happening and upsetting like when Marvin
died and then came to life’. He was also able to describe his nervousness at the start of the
sessions: ‘On the first day I was shy...but on the second Friday after that I was OK.’
This developing emotional awareness was also noted by the adults. For example Ross’s TA
commented on how Ross appeared to open up emotionally as the weeks progressed:
39
I felt that all of a sudden, whereas the story was quite light and fun, all
of a sudden it became more dark and I was feeling we were getting
more into Ross and what he was thinking deep down...it was like an
onion, peeling off the layers and the more he got relaxed with us...I
personally felt that he was aiming to start speaking more openly.
4.1.3 Use of the stories to process emotional anxiety
Analysis of the metaphors contained in the sample of pupils’ stories showed a high degree of
correlation with the pupil’s presenting emotional issues. This correlation is particularly evident
in the two individual pupil profiles in the following chapter as well as in Fred’s story (below) and
other excerpts included throughout this chapter.
Recurring story themes
i) Friendship difficulties featured as a dominant theme in all of the pupils’ stories. The
following extracts are typical of the anxieties expressed around relationships with peers in
many other stories:
[Bob the rabbit] is sad because he has no friends. He felt lonely and cold. He
wanted someone to play with. (Beth’s story)
Gordon the gorilla was feeling angry because one of the other gorillas had pushed
him. (Pete’s story)
Dino’s friends were cross. They said that wasn’t the way to play the game.
(Ed’s story)
ii) Overcoming adversity. Overcoming huge obstacles and dealing with peer conflicts were
frequently highlighted by parents and Story Links teachers as main story themes:
All his stories had a huge great challenge or battle or something ghastly
that had to be got over... if not an actual battle there was a huge conflict
of some sort that only could be resolved by monumental forces
unknown to man actually. Mark’s SL teacher
iii) Nourishment or lack of it was another main theme as evident in the following story extracts:
He felt angry because he was hungry. He was hungry because he couldn’t go to the
shops. He couldn’t go to the shops because he had hurt his foot. (Aaron’s story)
Tea was mashed up crickets. Lily usually ate hers very quickly. Lily was hungry.
Lily’s Mum knew that she did not really like mashed up crickets. She liked locusts.
They roasted three locusts in the oven...Lily put the roasted locusts on the window
sill to cool down. Someone crept up to the cave and nicked them. (Rosie’s story)
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Leo needed something to eat but there was nothing.... Leo went off in search of
food. He walked and walked but there was nothing. (Harry’s story)
His brother and sister were in the hut and Alex couldn’t get in. He needed a drink
but his brother and sister were in the way. (Beth)
iii) Getting lost or abandoned was also a prominent theme to emerge in the stories
Bess looked in the grass. She hopped to the gate and looked there. She could not
find her home. She felt lost. (Lisa’s story)
Alex the guinea pig was stuck in the park in a storm. Someone picked him up but
they didn’t know where he lived. (Beth’s story)
Pupils’ projection of their own feelings onto story characters
Many of the story openings given by the Story Links teacher addressed ‘difficult’ emotional
issues that related to the particular child. The contribution given by the pupil next shows how
they would instinctively project their own experiences onto the story character. Here are a few
examples:
SL teacher: Alex the guinea pig was very angry and fed up.
Beth: He couldn’t go for a swim in the bath but his brother
and sister could.
(Beth competed with six siblings for attention at home)
SL teacher: Dino the dinosaur was very angry. He sat outside his
cave and growled.
Ed: He wanted to be the King but he wasn’t so he killed
the King.
(Ed was often fighting with peers and wanted to be in control)
SL teacher: Ranio the Rhino was very angry
John: because Fred had run off without him after pushing
Ranio into the water hole.
(John had frequent fights and few friends)
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Here is a discussion of one pupil’s story in more detail to illustrate further the way in which the
stories reflected the child’s particular emotional issues:
Fred’s story
Seven year old Fred had been excluded from his previous school because of challenging
behaviour after which his mother, who had three older children, kept him at home for a term.
He had been at his present school for a few weeks when he began the Story Links programme.
He was one of the pupils who often self‐harmed and had even talked of killing himself.
According to the SENCO, behaviour giving rise to concern in school included banging his head on
the desk, punching himself and threatening to kill himself by jumping off the top of the climbing
apparatus and other high places. Despite, or perhaps because of, this behaviour, the SENCO also
said that adults at the school felt very caring towards him and that ‘everybody wants to take him
home’.
Fred did not have any contact with his biological father but had a step‐father who was a black
African. His mother mentioned a racist incident at his childminder’s that had really upset Fred:
I had this phone call and I was here on reception answering the phone
and my manager was probably over there and she could hear my son
screaming hysterically “I want to die, I wish I could die, I’d be better off
dead.” And I was sent home from work because... my husband couldn’t
control him and he (Fred) had been told all black people do is kill you,
and my husband’s black, by my so‐called friend. Fred’s Mum
Fred’s anxiety about his relationship with father figures and his self‐harming are both clearly
reflected in the following Story Links story:
Sammy and his Dad
Sammy the squirrel was in the field feeling very angry because he had lost his dad.
Sammy’s dad was looking for Sammy everywhere. He was getting very worried.
Sammy started to hit his head on the tree again and again. Sammy started to cry,
he did not like hitting his head…
He hit his head all day long and wished his dad were there to look after him. His
dad came over the hill and called out to Sammy.
Sammy looked round and saw his dad. He ran up to him. Sammy was crying because
he was so happy to be with his dad but his head was hurting. Sammy’s dad saw a
red mark on Sammy’s head. He was worried for Sammy. Sammy was happy. He
knew that his dad cared for him and he was there to keep him safe.
Sammy’s head hurt a little bit. He knew that he should stop hitting his head
because people cared for him and they only wanted him to be happy.
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This story also illustrates the way in which the Story Links teacher allows the central
dilemma/tension to be explored but also provides a secure emotional ‘resting place’ at the end
of the story.
4.1.4 Use of drawing to deepen the metaphor
In many cases the drawings created by the pupils were very powerful and indicated an
emotional engagement with the story characters. For instance, the picture of Gold Fang, below
was drawn by Mark, a pupil who had considerable friendship difficulties. Gold Fang was an eagle
who had been trapped in a dark tower and was lonely. The story text explains how he finds a
way out to the ‘top of the tower and stretched out his wings. Finally he was free!’ Mark’s picture
with the strong wings and clear space around the bird and the crumbling, broken‐down tower
vividly illustrates the sense of freedom experienced by Gold Fang at escaping from his ‘tower’ of
loneliness and deepens the metaphor introduced in the text.
Several of the TAs mentioned how pupils would often chat about and extend the story while
they were drawing. For instance Mark’s TA commented that he would ‘interpret what he
imagined on to the paper more’ and Pete’s TA reported that ‘when he [Pete] was doing the
drawing he would sort of say more about them and think about... there was more in his mind
that went on.’
4.1.5 TAs occasionally ‘jumped in’ to make it ‘alright’
While all the TAs worked very well in the sessions some of the SL teachers mentioned that at
first the TA had a tendency to ‘make everything alright’ in the story rather than allowing the
emotional dilemmas within the story to unfold. One commented that, ‘It seems like the TA
came in and sorted it out...perhaps prematurely’; and another mentioned how straight away the
TA said ‘something like “So he said he was very sorry”’. Another had been concerned that the
TA introduced a number of new characters and that this deflected the story from the theme set
up by the pupil. However, most of the SL teachers had found that TAs were responsive when the
principle of allowing the central dilemma, provided by the pupil, to unfold was explained.
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4.2 Impact on significant relationships
4.2.1 Pupil/parent relationship
A mutually enjoyable educational activity for parents and pupils
One of the platforms on which Story Links is based is that positive attachment takes place when
parent and child are engaged together in a ‘mutually enjoyable activity’ (para 1.3above) and
therefore the evaluation examined how much pupils and parents had enjoyed doing the
sessions together. The majority of parents (10/12) and all the pupils said they had found the
sessions ‘enjoyable’.
Parents found the sessions ‘fun’
Parents frequently used words such as’ fun’, ‘enjoyed’ ‘giggled’ ‘laughed’ when describing the
sessions. Comments included: ‘Brilliant, I really enjoyed the sessions‐ they used to brighten me
up on a Tuesday...We had laughs and giggled’ (Lisa’s Mum); ‘I’ve enjoyed it. Sometimes it’s quite
difficult to just take up with the story, so I struggled a little bit with that. But it was fun. (Ross’s
foster Mum).
The majority particularly mentioned the humour triggered by the spontaneous story‐making
activity:
Actually it’s been quite good fun actually...One starts, then the next, and
you don’t know what the other person’s gonna say... I think Harry
enjoyed that bit of it. Harry’s Mum
I come out with a line something about Alfie [cat] was so fat that when
he purred he shook the room and we had to stroke him with a broom.
And [Story Links teacher] couldn’t stop laughing... We had a laugh with
it didn’t we [to wife]? It was really fun. Rosie’s Dad
Several of the parents also mentioned the satisfaction they got from supporting their child with
their learning:
I enjoyed it...I did and I was glad to be part of it actually .It made me feel
like I was actually doing something. Pete’s Mum
I actually really enjoyed that [story‐making] because it was so much fun
watching which way Ed’s brain went because he’s got so much
imagination Ed’s Mum
Only two parents did not use words such as ‘fun’ or enjoy’ to describe their experience: one of
these mentioned several times that her son had enjoyed the sessions and found them ‘fun’ but
that she herself had found the sessions difficult at first though she gradually became more
confident:
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‘Well I’ve personally found the sessions very difficult... I think I struggle
wondering about how to put a story together, so it’s kind of a mental
block for me. So for me it’s been a great experience because I feel I’ve
actually gained a bit of confidence myself. Mark’s Mum
The other (Fred’s Mum) just said the sessions were ‘fine’ and that making up stories had been
‘easy’ and she also attended all the sessions.
Pupils’ enjoyed sessions – especially seeing their parents
All the pupils said that they had enjoyed the Story Links programme (see para 4.7.1 for details).
In addition to making up stories, which all pupils enjoyed, the overwhelming reason given as to
why they enjoyed the sessions was ‘seeing my mum [ in school]’. One said he didn’t get much
time with Mum at home because of the demands of his sister, another said that he and his Mum
didn’t ‘get time together much’ outside the sessions and several said it was good for their
‘reading and writing’.
Well I like making up stories...That’s been great...I just like to see my
mum a bit more...when I’m at home I have my sister around all the time.
And I like seeing her alone, my mum. Mark
I like seeing my Mum and I like making my own stories Lisa
It’s really fun and sometimes I do it at home so it’s better for my reading
and writing. I woke up and I felt right I’m going to enjoy today
because...I can go in and see my mum again. Rosie
One pupil confessed to being ‘a bit nervous at first’ about his Mum coming in but added ‘just for
the first week then it was OK’.
Enjoying storymaking at home together
The fact that the storymaking had been a mutually enjoyable activity was confirmed by the fact
that 25% of the parent sets started making up stories with their child at home. In two cases
siblings had also been included. Rosie’s Dad, who was a non‐reader himself, was one of these
parents and talked about how doing this storymaking with Rosie and her younger brother at
home had been ‘great fun, yeah, great fun’. And for John, stories created at home with his
mother had informed the school‐based story‐making session. (see Pupil profile A).
Parents and teachers reflections on the impact on the parent/pupil relationship
Apart from commenting on how much they had enjoyed the sessions a number of parents spoke
about how the programme had supported their relationship with their child. For instance, when
Ian’s Mum was asked ‘What’s it like being Ian’s Mum?’ in the pre interview she didn’t reply at
first but then said:
The silence says it all. It’s challenging, hard work, it’s constant really, yes,
constant attention he needs, that’s it really... He’s emotional, he’s very
quick tempered, frustrated or angry.
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However in her post interview she talked about how the sessions in school and the reading at
home had improved their relationship:
I think it’s brought us closer, Ian and me... definitely...I think he enjoyed
my company, me coming in to school as part of his club and for us to do
it together at home... And then he said “We haven’t got a Friday Club
any more. Can you and I have another club?” So we’re going to have a
club at home... it’s a trust thing as well, I think. I think Ian trusts me now
not to get angry with him [when he reads]. Ian’s Mum
For Pete’s Mum, it had been a revelation to see how much her son valued spending time with
her in school:
I didn’t realise you know how much he wanted, as I say, I think it was the
fact that I was coming into the school as well because even [TA] said he
used to get quite excited and he couldn’t wait for me to come in. Pete’s Mum
She also commented on how she had learnt some new things about her son from doing the
stories such as ‘he likes picnics which I didn’t even realise.’
Many of the professionals, like Ian’s Story Links teacher, also commented on how pupils had
been eager to get to the sessions in order to see their parents:
He would often arrive at our sessions a few minutes early, so in other
words he missed the last few minutes of golden time because he was
quite keen to get to the story session and he particularly liked the fact
that mum was there, he was always very pleased to see her. Ian’s SL teacher
And Mark’s TA reported that his whole demeanour would change when she reminded him of his
mother coming into school. She said he often looked unhappy and had ‘a lot of behaviour
problems, he lashes out sometimes’ but that
I saw the side with his mum and we saw kind of his more happiness with
mum so the relationship... I’d like see him in the playground and go “Oh
yes, don’t forget we’re doing the Story Links with your mum later” and
he’d like smile and seemed quite excited about it. So it was something
he looked forward to. Mark’s TA
Several Story Links teachers also indicated that pupils felt ‘special’ at having their parent engage
with them in school:
I think it made him feel quite special and I think he really loved his Mum
coming in and she was great, she was very cooperative and very pleased
to do it. So I felt it actually went very well. Ian’s SL teacher
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Undivided attention of the parent
For some of the pupils the sessions had provided a space where they could have their parents’
undivided attention without competition from their siblings. One of these was Beth who was
one of seven children. Her Story Links teacher talked about the importance for her of this ‘me
time’ with her mother:
I think it made a huge difference to Beth, that her mum actually came in
for her, you know I think this idea of something special for the kid, as far
as the parent is concerned, is very important... I think the simple time
spent on her, it’s been an exercise that she has looked upon as personal,
this is ‘me’ time and she’s got new time from Mum. Now she’s in a big
family, it must be difficult for Mum to give her time. So actually what
Mum has done is actually give her twenty minutes undivided attention
and a cuddle at the end of it... I think Beth really likes that [cuddle] Beth’s SL teacher
The story as a positive reminder of the parent
In most of the pupils' stories a nurturing mother figure appears and had often been introduced
by the Story Links teacher or the parent themselves, as illustrated by the following excerpts:
The Dino sat down with his Mum and had a cup of dragon tea and two chocolate
biscuits before he had to go to bed. (Aaron’s story)
He saw a bear and ran off and went home to his Mum. (Ian’s story)
In a number of the stories with a domestic animal as the main character, the animal’s ‘owner’
often appeared and seemed to take the role of a parental figure:
Bo the dog used to bark all the time. He barked and barked and barked. His
owners had a clever machine which changed Bo’s barks into words. Bo’s barks said,
“Go away, go away, go away!” (John’s story)
There was in fact either a parent or ‘owner’ at some point in all of the pupils’ final collection of
stories.
Expressions of affection in reality and in the story metaphor
As physical closeness and warmth is an integral part of a healthy attachment relationship
between parent and child, hugs and kisses are encouraged between the parent and child at the
beginning and end of sessions. Some of the Story Links teachers commented on the physical
expression of affection between some of the pupils and parents. For instance, Fred’s Story Links
teacher had this to say:
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At first when he would come in he would want to go up to her and put
his arm round her, she wasn’t that responsive...And then one week she
actually held out her hands...That was towards the end. Yes because
initially we had to say, “Say goodbye to Mum, go and give her a hug,”
and it was all very [pause] but then she started doing it. Fred’s SL teacher
Fred’s Mum had not been able to make time to hear him read at home and said that she had
passed this responsibility onto his older brother. She clearly had an idea that reading together
could support attachment as she added that she thought this would ‘bring the children closer’.
In fact, from what Fred said, this reading and ‘closeness’ with the brother did not actually take
place. It seemed that Fred brought his unmet attachment needs into school as he appeared to
evoke a desire for protection and emotional closeness in the adults supporting him:
I just want to hug him...that’s what most people feel as well... the adult
response is you just want to try and help him when he’s really angry. Fred‘s SENCO
And Lisa’s Story Links teacher mentioned how when Lisa came into the room for the Story Links
session she was eager to have some affection from her mother but, like Fred, did not receive a
warm response from her mother:
Lisa comes in and kind of flings herself at her mother, and she clings on
to her almost like a kitten might cling on if they were afraid of falling and
her mum will say something like, “Sit in your place Lisa.”
Over two or three sessions the Story Links teacher recalled how Lisa ‘started acting like a
younger child. She started clinging to her mother and peeping out behind‐ but Mum didn’t want
any of this and would swat her away’. Lisa had then started to refuse to read and said that she
didn’t want to do the Story Links sessions and that her mum ‘needn’t bother to come’. However,
Lisa’s Mum had said ‘Well I’m coming anyway, so we’ll see how you feel when I get there.’ The
Story Links teacher thought Lisa had been ‘sort of like testing her mum, you know?’ and that
‘when her Mum did come she had actually been quite happy.’
Lisa’s Story Links teacher reported that around the same time as this reluctance to engage with
the Story Links sessions she decided to bring ‘a few bits of cuddling into the stories’. Here is an
example of how this was included in the story metaphor:
He (Max the cat) found his owner, Amy. He wanted to be with her. Max liked Amy.
She picked him up and put him on her lap. She stroked his soft warm fur. Max
purred and purred. He liked Amy to stroke him. (Lisa’s story)
The Story Links teacher also reported that ‘I started giving permission, you know I started saying,
“Do you want to give your mum a cuddle?”’ Mum had then started to respond to her daughter
and Lisa, according to the Story Links teacher, then began to be ‘more relaxed’ and started to
make some progress with her reading. Towards the end of the sessions she also noticed a
change in Lisa’s mother’s communication with herself:
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It was quite interesting because today she (Mum) actually smiled at me
and made proper eye contact whereas before she literally just kind of
sits there. Lisa’s SL teacher
In fact in her post interview Lisa’s Mum said, ‘I’ve enjoyed coming in...Just coming along and
making the story up with Lisa ‐ and seeing Lisa’ She added that the reading at home had been ‘ a
cosy thing to do, one to one with Lisa.’
4.2.2 Impact on peer and sibling relationships
The results of the SDQ completed by pupils’ classteachers indicate a significant improvement in
pupils’ peer relationships across the group, as shown in Figure 5 below. Pre intervention just
under two‐thirds of the pupils had above average difficulties in getting along with their peers in
school, with five of these falling into the ‘very high’ category. However, the post SDQ showed
that these difficulties had reduced for all 7 of the ‘above average’ pupils and only 2 remained in
the ‘very high’ category.
Figure 5: Goodman's SDQ for Impact on Difficulties Getting Along with Other Children
Key: 0‐3= Close to average; 4= Slightly raised; 5= High; 6 ‐10= Very High
The pupil who showed the greatest improvement in peer relationships at school was Ed, who
was one of five children and had a brother, a couple of years younger with severe physical
disabilities. This improvement, according to his mother had been mirrored at home in his
relationship with his younger disabled brother:
At home his behaviour has improved tenfold, he had some quite severe
anger issues...he suffers from an awful lot of frustration‐especially
regarding his brother...major, major, major improvement all round…
[with] the anger.
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His mother also commented on how his peer relationships at school had improved:
He started removing himself from potential problems. Whereas in the
past he would just have lashed and fought you know and had fights now,
and all of the teachers have commented to me about how impressed
they are with him because the other children also know which buttons
to press with Ed, so if they’re bored or whatever they’ll sort of start and
he actually walks away... He’s not perfect, he’ll never be perfect... He’s
got the maturity now to walk away.
The pupil with the lowest score for difficulties with peers pre and post intervention, indicating
that he good social relationships throughout, was the child in long term foster care. This was
probably due to his referral being primarily for poor literacy and inattention in the classroom.
Observations by parents on peer relationships
As the primary focus of the Story Links intervention is on individual work with the pupil, the
main data relating to peer relationships in school was gathered from the classteachers as
discussed above. However, the mothers of the two boys whose scores remained in the ‘very
high’ SDQ category for friendship difficulties also talked about their sons’ relationships with
peers. Pete’s Mum talked about how they had used the story metaphor to focus on her son’s
friendship difficulties and that he had gradually become more empathic within his own story
contribution:
He does have a slight conflict when he’s playing so we tried to
emphasise on how, how he would feel especially if he was like Gordon
(the Gorilla), how he would feel. So you know I think there was one bit in
here that one of them went up and hurt the other one and he came out
with ‘Oh he was really upset’ which before we wouldn’t have got him to
write that. Pete’s Mum
She added that at home Pete was, ‘a lot more concerned about his brother now. Whereas
before you know his brother was a nuisance. And now they’re actually getting on quite well.’
Making progress with friendships was also observed by Mark’s mother: ‘He has also in the last
few weeks got a new friendship; really got that working’. This view was supported by his Story
Links teacher.
It’s a terrible thing isn’t it with these children, the children who are the
most needy of friendships and wanting to need to socialise are
sometimes the ones that put everybody off them all, and I would think
he was like that... He seems better now... people will engage with him
more... and although his relationships with children are rocky they’re
not impossible. Mark’s SL teacher
Use of stories to address difficulties with siblings
Sibling rivalry can be related to anxious attachment (Bowlby, 1973) and often the relational
pattern towards siblings is transferred to children’s wider friendships. This section presents two
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examples of how the sessions were used to process the pupil’s ambivalent feelings towards
siblings.
Ross’s story
One of nine‐year old Ross’s stories particularly addressed the issue of sibling rivalry between
himself and his thirteen‐year old old brother, both of whom were in long‐term foster placement.
At the time of the Story Links Programme, their foster carer was finding it very difficult to cope
with the older brother’s challenging behaviour. The Story Links teacher reported that about
three weeks into the programme, Ross’s foster carer was ‘in tears one week about Ross’s older
brother and we weren’t able to do the session’. The Story Links teacher took her to the staff
room where the foster mother explained that it had been ‘difficult at home with C [older
brother]’ and that Ross would sometimes got into the role of protecting her. According to the
Story Links teacher Ross may be the ‘preferred’ child.
After a couple of weeks of the Story Links programme the message came from home that Ross’s
older brother, C, wanted to also be included in the stories. Ross then put him in as a black
scorpion using his real name C (not recommended in the training). Ross described his main
character Freddie and the scorpion as ‘arch enemies’ and according to his foster mother
‘wanted to keep killing him off’. At one point Ross said that the scorpion was going to be run
over but as the story went round the circle the adults changed it to a more minor accident:
Freddie ‘accidentally’ ran over C’s, the black scorpion’s, toe with a quad bike.
Because of this C popped one of the tyres on the bike.
The story continued,
Freddie said “Sorry” but C was very angry because he had to go back into the
hospital. He already had a broken arm because he had been fighting with a red
lobster and he lost.
Two stories later the scorpion appears again and one the group suggested that Freddie makes
friends with the scorpion. Ross’ contribution was
Freddie thought and thought about it for a long time. Sometimes he had wished C
was dead or not even around. He could not decide what to say.
After some input to the story from the adults, the story brought about a resolution to the
conflict:
51
As Freddie was thinking he started

remembering how he and C used to get
on and the fun times they had shared
together. He remembered once in the
jungle how they had had a race to climb
a tree and how C had won. He chuckled to
himself as he remembered trying his best
to scrabble up the tree. He looked at C and
nodded “Yes he said let’s try to be friends.”
C, the scorpion, held out his unbroken leg and Freddie held out his paw. They shook
on it.
A few sessions later Ross wanted to have a character that also had his own name in the story. At
one point when the scorpion and the character ‘Ross’ are on a sea journey from England to
Africa, a thunderstorm strikes and now ‘Ross’ comes to the rescue of the scorpion who was
‘really very frightened because he could not swim and was feeling sick’. At this point Ross had
the story character ‘Ross’ saying to the scorpion: ‘Get in my pocket, stay there safe and I will
look after you.’
Ross spoke about the above story in his post interview:
I read it to my brother as well... He wanted to be in it and then I put him
in it and I put him as a black scorpion... He didn’t want to be a black
scorpion (but) it was already in the book... they were arch enemies...
and they made friends.
4.2.3 The Teaching Assistant as a school‐based attachment figure
It appeared that all the pupils had formed good relationships with the teaching assistant (TA)
who attended the sessions and also provided the 2 x 20 min follow‐up reading practice sessions
each week. In fact it was the TA rather than the Story Links teacher who seemed to take on the
role of the child’s ‘substitute attachment figure’ (Bomber, 2008) providing them with a ‘secure
emotional base’ in school.
In some cases it had been arranged that the TA would continue to support the pupil once the
Story Links programme finished in order to capitalise on the trusting relationship that had
developed with the pupil:
He built up this very good relationship with the TA... and now the Story
Links is going to stop and I didn’t want to leave him high and dry, so
what we have gone on to do... as the reading has improved...is that now
he’s going to have to do some writing of his own, so they will do some
talking of a story and then he’ll do some writing so that will be the
extension. Mark’s SL teacher
52
Bomber (ibid) points out that the presence of a positive attachment figure in school is
particularly important for pupils like Ross who are in care. The Story Links programme appeared
to have facilitated the development of such a relationship between Ross and his TA who talked
about how she had made a ‘link’ with Ross which ‘carries on outside the sessions’. She felt that
she was able to be a reminder for him of what he had achieved in the sessions:
What he learns from story writing he can then take that, I’m that
reminder in school that he knows that those skills that he has to use for
problem‐solving aren’t just on a Thursday morning at 9 o’clock
When asked what she thought these problem‐solving skills were she replied,
What I picked out was that he was very thoughtful, that he had a good
memory, he could recall when we were going through the story he could
remember how he had resolved a problem before it was thought up in
the story.
Ross’s foster mother, like other parents, had appreciated getting to know the TA:
When Ross goes into Year 5, he’s going to go to her (TA) and have extra
lessons and so it’s nice to meet her and Ross likes her
However, in one case, issues had sometimes arisen when the pupil had formed a strong
attachment with the TA but then had to share her with other pupils:
If he hasn’t got that one‐on‐one then that’s it, he’ll disrupt the rest of
the group and it’s quite hard work. John’s TA
John’s Story Links teacher thought that the reason for this might be that ‘he’s had specialist
attention from her ‐he may want more of that’. The experience of John’s TA underlines the
fragility of relationships for these vulnerable pupils.6 (See also individual pupil profile A)
4.3 Impact on pupils’ behaviour and rates of exclusion
4.3.1 Impact on behaviour in the classroom
Figure 6 below shows the improvement in behaviour pre and post the intervention as indicated
by the Goodman’s SDQ. Nine of the pupils scored above average for behavioural difficulties
before the Story Links intervention with six of these falling into the ‘very high’ category. By the

6
A TA who supported the sessions run by the researcher to pilot the evaluation tools, though not included in this main evaluation,
had a similar experience. She had said how for the first couple of weeks the pupil started following her around the school at any
opportunity. This was a very anxious and angry seven year old boy who often ran out of class and found it difficult to form
relationships with either adults or peers. He started to engage positively with reading with the TA in their sessions –something he
was unable to do in class. However, a couple of weeks into the programme the TA had to reprimand him in the corridor about an
incident and after that he refused to work with her.
53
end of the intervention there had been a significant reduction in the behavioural difficulties of
seven out of these nine, the scores for the remaining two ‘above average’ pupils stayed
constant.
Figure 6: Goodman's SDQ for Impact on Pupils' Behavioural Difficulties in School
Key: 0‐2 = Close to average; 3 = Slightly raised ; 4=high; 5‐10 =Very High;
It might be pertinent, given that the intervention targeted pupils with BESDs, to consider the
three pupils, Ross, Rosie and Fred, who fell in the ‘close to average’ initial score bracket. The
first, Ross, was in long‐term foster care and the concerns about him focused on his inattention.
For, Rosie, the second pupil in this bracket, her SENCO said ‘she’s not the sort of child to be
excluded, it’s all internal with her’. However she had self‐excluded when upset and there were
serious concerns about her self‐harming. The SENCO also had this to say:
In the past she’s pulled hair out and she had to have her hair cut
because it was pulled out so much, and now she’s resorting to sort of
scratching her face...her main problem is emotional, she doesn’t have
really behaviour problems. She’s needing a lot of support for anxiety
type difficulties...She has had quite a turbulent childhood, the family
moved from B from very quite dangerous circumstances and I think that
she worries a lot for the safety of her family, her family do have a fair
amount of disputes with neighbours and I think the neighbours actually
are quite frightening for Rosie and she tends to [pause] ... take it out on
herself.
The third pupil, seven year old Fred, with an initial ‘close to average’ score had recently joined
the school having been excluded from his previous school because of challenging behaviour and
54
was on a part‐time timetable at the start of the Story Links programme. Like Rosie, he also had
self‐harming tendencies and according to his SENCO had threatened to kill himself by jumping
off high places. However, while the SDQ behaviour difficulties score for Ross and Rosie
correlated with the interview data, in the case of Fred there seems to be some discrepancy
between these. According to the SL teacher, who was also his SENCO, Fred’s self‐harming
tendencies was also accompanied by challenging behaviour. Here is an excerpt from her initial
interview:
He ran out (of class) and then he threatened to jump off the top of the
climbing frame... he hides quite a lot as well... That’s him running off,
hiding, swearing, saying he wants to kill himself (and saying) ‘I don’t care
about my f‐ing certificates’ Fred’s SENCO
His last statement in the above quotation obviously refers to an individual behaviour reward
programme that appears not to have been working at that point in time!
In considering the SDQ scores for the group it is also important to bear in mind that two of the
pupils, Ian and Aaron, were both in small classes in a special school with a strong focus on
behaviour management and, as their classteachers pointed out, their scores for behaviour
difficulties would probably have been much higher if they had been in a mainstream classroom.
4.3.2 Parent and Story Links teachers views on impact on pupils’ behaviour
Figure 7 below shows that all parents and Story Links teachers thought there had been an
improvement in the behaviour of pupils in the cohort. Teachers’ views obviously related only to
behaviour in school whereas parents were asked to make a judgement on their child’s behaviour
in both home and school contexts.
55
Figure 7: Parent and teachers views on impact of SLP on pupils' behaviour
There was a close correlation between the parent and teacher ratings for individual pupils and it
was the same pupil, Ed, who was considered by his teacher and mother to have made ‘very
significant’ improvement. His mother had this to say,
OK, I was pretty sure this would help his reading, which is why I was
doing it, what I wasn’t prepared for was the impact it’s had on the rest
of his life. The difference it has made to him has been absolutely. He had
a fantastic school report from his teacher when we had a Parent Teacher
evening, his teacher was absolutely amazed at the improvement in his
behaviour... At home his behaviour has improved tenfold, he had some
quite severe anger issues... The anger, he started removing himself from
potential problems... whereas in the past he would just have lashed and
fought you know and had fight. Now, and all of the teachers have
commented to me about how impressed they are with him, because the
other children also know which buttons to press with Ed, so if they’re
bored or whatever they’ll sort of start and he actually walks away.
56
She later added,
He’s not perfect, he’ll never be perfect [but] he’s got the maturity now
to walk away. It’s like his brain’s fired up which is absolutely brilliant, I
really, really didn’t expect one hour a day to have this impact on his life.
And I’ve got nothing but praise for it.
It seems that one of things to come out of the sessions was that Ed was now less egocentric and
more able to negotiate in his relationship with his mother:
He is now aware when I’m busy and he doesn’t bug me, he’ll step back,
whereas before whatever I’m doing he’d be straight in and you’d end up
“Oh for goodness sake!” Now he’ll step back and wait until I’m finished
... instead of being completely self‐orientated as children are, beginning
to look outside and offering to help. Ed’s Mum
Ed’s SENCO also spoke about his improved behaviour in school saying that before the Story Links
programme he had been taken off the playground ‘nearly every day’. She said that there was
still ‘an incident involving Ed probably once a week’ but added that although this ‘might not
sound great, it is compared to [before]’
Comments from other parents and Story Links teachers in final interviews highlight precisely the
difference the Story Links programme made to their behaviour. Lisa’s Mum said that she used to
‘have little tantrums and walk out of class’ but that ‘all that’s stopped now and she’s a lot more
happier’. Rosie’s Dad said that his daughter now ‘tends to think before she acts’ and Mark’s
Story Links teacher said that whereas there used to be complaints about his behaviour in the
playground ‘not just daily but twice daily’, these had lessened.
Two steps forward and one step back
For the majority of the pupils whose behaviour had improved, however, there were clearly
times when their behaviour could still slip back:
He still has the odd outburst... but I think they’re getting less and less
and he’s learning to calm himself down before it gets to the point of no
return. Aaron’s Mum
I would say generally there was an improvement in his behaviour but
there have been days when he has slipped back on his behaviour. Pete’s TA
This correlated with what Pete’s Mum had to say about his behaviour:
I think he doesn’t lash out and he has kind of like controlled that
anyway. But it’s a lot of like, there’s a lot of verbal sort of things that are
going on and things that shouldn’t be said. Pete’s Mum
57
One of the Story Links teachers mentioned how she was disappointed to notice that
improvements seen in the Story Links sessions for Mark were not carried over into the
classroom:
In the Story Links sessions... all of us had built up a fairly good and
trusting relationship but when I had his class for a PPA cover it was as
though he was back being in my classroom as he had been in Year 3,
although not quite as bad as he had been then, but attention seeking
and irritating other children...So it was a bit disappointing really. Mark’s SL teacher
And Mark’s Mum also said that while he was beginning to develop an awareness of issues
beyond himself, she thought it was still ‘a very, very slow process’.
4.3.3 Behaviour in Story Links sessions
All the Story Links teachers reported that the pupils’ behaviour had been remarkably good in the
actual Story Links sessions. Some teachers and parents had been surprised at how well the pupil
behaved in sessions compared to their previous behaviour in school:
He loved it, his behaviour was impeccable throughout...It’s
incredible...[I] still see him around school and he still does quite a bit,
you know, gets involved in stuff but he never once did in that setting. Aaron’s SL teacher
He’s got a temper and... he does start messing around so it was nice
just... having (him) calm and just being kind of creative, it was lovely. Mark’s TA
I was amazed, I was really amazed... it was just like seeing him sitting, it
must have been quite daunting for him... and you know even [SL
teacher] was amazed Pete’s Mum
However, a number of the pupils had taken a few sessions to settle down. As pupils’ behaviour
in Story Links sessions was intricately connected to their degree of engagement with the
educational task this is discussed in the section on engagement with learning (4.5.7 below).
4.3.4 Implementation of the classroom/parent behaviour reward system
Part of the Story Links programme was to involve the classteacher in providing a score for the
pupil’s behaviour in class during the week (see They are then joined 1.4). The TA brings this
score to the session and a reward system is negotiated between parent and child. However, only
a minority of the Story Links teachers had managed to implement this consistently. Some had
just forgotten to do it and others, like Mark’s Story Links teacher, had found difficulty in getting
the classteacher to implement it:
Actually I found the teacher was the biggest problem in this whole thing
because he didn’t remember or he didn’t sort of make a mental note
and he didn’t respond when the TA came in. Mark’s SL teacher
58
In Fred’s case the Story Links teacher and TA were concerned that his mother was using the
promise of a reward to control him:
The treat was some major magazine and something else... and she said
‘But you don’t get it if you don’t do this and you don’t get it if you don’t
do that, and you don’t do’ and we were like ‘Well it’s just if he [his score]
goes up he will get this treat and so you’ve got to decide.’ TA
For some pupils the behaviour target and reward had worked to a limited degree. Pete’s target
had been to ‘come straight into class after break’ as he would usually ‘wander all over the
school’ and had ‘a habit of taking different routes and spending time in the toilet and then
taking a long route back to class.’ His Story Links teacher said that he ‘did improve although
again he needed monitoring and prompting.’ His treat from Mum had been ‘an extra kick boxing
lesson’ but ‘she didn’t give him a treat that often’.
However, for a few pupils the involvement of the classteacher in the reward system had worked
well and provided a valuable link with the classteacher. In one case where the target was used
consistently, the parent thought it was the communication from the classteacher rather than
the reward that was important:
I don’t think he was bothered about the reward but he just liked to hear
the score, and that we were pleased, and if he wasn’t he was quite
interested to think about oh I’ll try harder next week so I think he
enjoyed that, so I think that was important...And especially the link with
the class teacher. Aaron’s Mum
4.3.5 The story as a reflection of pupils’ changed behaviour
Of course there would have been a wide range of other factors, both at home and at school,
that may have had an impact on pupils’ behaviour during the course of the intervention.
However, for one pupil, Harry, the connection between home and school provided by the Story
Links sessions appeared to have supported quite a dramatic improvement in his behaviour, and
for this reason an account of his case is presented here.
Harry’s story
According to his classteacher nine‐year old Harry would often ‘throw himself on the floor
screaming’ when asked to do a task and would also frequently run out of class. The SENCO
added at that other times he would ‘hide under a table and start wailing and will need coaxing
out’. She described his ‘wailing’ as like ‘an air‐raid siren going off’ and added that this was very
distressing for the other children and would lead to his removal from the classroom. The SENCO
said that these episodes would usually be ‘in response to some minor thing that he is scared of ‐
scared of cats one day and not the next...’ another time when asked to do handwriting he said
‘the sun is shining and I don’t like it when the sun was out.’
Mum had attended most of the sessions though had missed three in the middle ‐ once with an
understandable reason and twice without giving a reason. The SENCO reported that on one of
these occasions Harry had ‘an outburst of tears’ when his Mum didn’t turn up. In all of the Story
Links sessions Harry’s behaviour had been exemplary and the SENCO said that ’it’s been
59
rewarding for us to see that he’s so engaged and so happy and feels that he can actually
produce something.’
However, in the main classroom, Harry’s behaviour continued to be very difficult at times over
the Story Links period – until the week before the sessions finished. In the final interview the
classteacher was laughing as she said ‘this week he has been exceptionally good’ and seemed
almost in a state of disbelief because his behaviour had improved so dramatically. She said he
had previously had odd ‘good’ days but that ‘we’ve never had a whole good week before.’ She
said he had also ‘started to pick up books and sit and pretend read’ which he had not done
before. The SENCO confirmed this saying that in class over the last week there had been ‘no
outbursts, no tantrums, no refusing to do anything, working cooperatively. He’s been very
engaged, very sensible, questioning’.
In his post interview Harry said that the Story Links sessions had made him ‘feel happy and it
feels like I’m at home [when Mum comes in]...It helps me because Mummy helps me.’ Harry was
then asked how he thought his behaviour had been and this is the conversation that followed:
Harry: I haven’t been this way ever...
Researcher: What’s this way?
Harry: I haven’t been this way since when I was in year 1.
Researcher: What is this way? Being better behaved?
Harry: Mmm. And then I was good at spelling and
handwriting in Year 1.
Researcher: Why do you think you didn’t get any better until
now?
Harry: Because I think it was I’m sort of (mumbles) got
scared easily that why I go all panicky.
Researcher: Do you think you’ve got over that now?
Harry: Mmm...
Researcher: What do you think has helped?
Harry: The stories, because they’re good.
Researcher: Do you think you’ll be able to keep this up.
Harry: Yes, if my brother leaves the landing light on.
60
The seemingly tenuous connection between Harry’s behaviour and how Harry went to sleep (i.e.
with landing light left on) was also brought up by Harry’s mother in her post interview. She said
that over the previous week Harry ‘hasn’t slept in my bed’ and that while she had ‘tried
everything’ to stop him sleeping with her in the past, he had ‘never gone a week before... this is
the first week he’s been more grown up’.
In the following story written in a session soon after Mum started attending again the metaphor
appears to have echoes of Harry’s ‘wailing’ in class, his ‘monkey‐like’ behaviour, the sleep issue
and also the need for the ‘baby’ part of Harry to feel close to his mother:
One day Ed the elephant plodded around the jungle. He was tired and needed to
rest. Ed heard a crying over in the distance of the valley. It was a long way away.
Ed could not have a rest now. He had to see who was crying. He plodded all day and
all night. He plodded across the dusty valley. His legs were tired and his trunk felt
heavy. He carried on plodding and then had to rest. Then he heard the crying
again.
He turned around and saw... two eyes. They were big and green and sad.
It was a baby monkey. The mummy monkey had dropped him. So Ed carefully
picked up the baby monkey with his trunk and reached up into the tree. The baby
jumped up into the tree. The baby jumped onto the branch. The baby looked
around and saw the mummy monkey’s tail hanging from a nearby tree. He jumped
from tree to tree until he could jump onto the mummy monkey’s back. Now Ed
could have his rest.
61
The change in Harry’s behaviour had been so dramatic that the SENCO agreed to inform the
researcher as to whether his improved behaviour continued the following week. She rang to say
that the improvement had been maintained apart from two days when he had regressed. On
speaking to his mother the SENCO heard that he had returned to sleeping with his mother on
the two nights preceding these ‘bad behaviour’ days. However, he then returned to sleeping in
his own bed and his behaviour again improved.
In Harry’s case it seems clear that the change in his sleeping arrangements at home was a key
factor impacting on his behaviour at school, though this was not the only factor. Both the jointly
created stories and the regular contact between home and school, provided by the Story Links
programme, provided a chance for the school and mother to think together, both directly and
indirectly through the stories, about Harry’s behaviour, his sleeping arrangements and the
‘emotional containment’ that Harry so clearly needed. In addition, Harry’s enjoyment of the
Story Links activities may have provided him with a reminder of a previous time in his school
career when he was engaged with learning.
4.3.6 Impact of pupils’ difficulties on the classteacher and the learning of peers
The risk of pupils’ exclusion from the classroom clearly depends very much on how their
behaviour is impacting on the class teacher’s ability to teach and whether it is disturbing the
learning of their peers. Figure 8 below shows how the pupil’s difficulties impacted on the
teacher and the other pupils in the classroom.
62
Figure 8: Goodman's SDQ for impact of pupils' difficulties on the child's learning
environment
Key: 0 = Close to average; 1 = Slightly raised; 2 = High; ≥ 3 = Very High
For two‐thirds of the group the impact of their difficulties on the learning environment
decreased and for the remaining one‐third they remained the same. The dramatic improvement
indicated by the SDQ for many of the pupils in this area correlated with the interview data, as
illustrated in the above discussion in section 4.3.5 regarding Harry’s behaviour in the classroom.
4.3.7 Exclusion from school, classroom and playground
There was a reduction in the number of exclusions from school, classroom and playground over
the course of the Story Links programme as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Exclusions pre and post Story Links
Exclusion over 12 months pre‐ Exclusion during Story Links
Story Links programme programme
School Classroom Playground School Classroom Playground
Twice or 0 5 5 0 0 3
more a
week
About once 0 3 0 0 3 1
a week
Less than 2 + 1 self‐ 2 2 0 1 2
once a week excluder
63
Exclusion from school
During the Story Links programme no pupils were excluded from school and the pupil who had
previously self‐excluded attended well. This is in contrast to the beginning where six had
previously been excluded from school and two of these only in the last year.
Exclusion from classroom and playground
Exclusions from the classroom and playground significantly decreased, as shown in Figure 9,
with only three being removed ‘about once a week’ and one being removed ‘two or three times’
over the twelve weeks of the intervention. Exclusions from the playground also reduced, though
to a lesser degree with the number of pupils being removed from the playground ‘twice or more
per week’ going down from five to three. This was also in contrast with their behaviour during
the twelve months before the intervention when eleven of the pupils were regularly removed
from the classroom or playground because of their behaviour.
4.4 Engagement of parents with the Story Links programme
4.4.1 Parental attendance as a sign of engagement
One measure of parental engagement in their child’s learning that is very significant in this
project is the parent’s attendance at the sessions. For many it was a new experience coming into
school to help their child learn. In a number of cases the school had a low expectation of the
participation of the parents and had considered that they were unlikely to be reliable. As Figure
10 (parental attendance) shows this turned out not to be the case. Parents attended well and
proved to be very committed, much to the surprise of some of the teachers, one of whom said:
Mum is very eager, surprisingly eager, the school is quite shocked that
she’s actually turning up religiously and is very committed. John’s SL teacher
And another:
Right at the beginning we didn’t think that her mother would be able to
come. She made a lot of excuses about not being able to get here at the
right time. We were very flexible and we just accommodated her and
since that second week she’s never missed a session, she comes
promptly on time. Lisa’s SL teacher
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Figure 10: Attendance of parents
The SENCO of a school located in an area of social deprivation (34% on SEN register) where two
behaviour support teachers had worked with four sets of parents and pupils confirmed the
teachers’ surprise at the parents’ attendance, comparing it to when they had previously tried to
engage parents by running a ‘Children’s University’:
[at] our school we can have something like a Children’s University and
most schools would have the parents beating the door down (but) we
would be lucky to get two parents to come along. So to have those four
parents with that level of take up, they’ve all had colds over the last few
weeks as they always do, but mostly they’ve managed to find a way
around it and turn up. SENCO
The significance of parental attendance as a major indicator of motivation for this programme is
highlighted by the case of Beth. Beth’s mother had seven children, several of whom had various
medical conditions and she had problems with her hips. She admitted that poor literacy was also
an issue for her: ‘I can’t read very well myself’. Despite these difficulties, she had still managed
to attend all but two sessions. The Story Links teacher commented on the challenge this must
have presented for her on several levels:
65
Mum’s extremely keen to help but I don’t think she’s literate herself so
actually to introduce a story into the house is a bit challenging for Mum
and I don’t think many of the older children are very good at reading
either...Mum is very enthusiastic about the project but of course she has
her own issues about whether she can get here or not...this is the
second one she’s missed out of 10, which I think actually is quite good
because it’s quite an effort for her to do.’
He also mentioned that one week Beth’s mother was ‘almost tearful’ when she rang to say she
couldn’t attend the session.
Factors supporting parental attendance
The behaviour support teachers working at the above SENCO’s school felt that the most
important ‘ingredient’ in delivering the programme was ‘engaging the parents’. They indicated a
number of factors that had particularly supported this engagement.
Firstly, the Story Links teachers had arranged a pre‐meeting with tea and biscuits for all the
parents to tell them what the Story Links programme was about and to stress the commitment.
They gave them the chance to meet each other although they noticed that ‘they didn’t actually
want to speak to each other at all.’
Secondly, they had started to remind the parents each week about the session by sending ‘a text
on Monday and a phone call on Tuesday morning.’ Without this, they thought that the parents
would have forgotten as ‘a lot of them lead very chaotic lives.’
Thirdly, they thought the good attendance was also due to the SENCO who had ‘matched the
kids and the parents to the programme because she knew them.’ This was particularly
important as they were members of the Learning Support Agency and did not work at the school
or know the pupils prior to the programme. The behaviour support teachers continued to liaise
with the SENCO throughout the programme. The SENCO had this to say about the parents’
attendance:
I think what else has been very revealing is that actually through no fault
of their own but just through circumstances the amount of times that
they forget or can’t make a specific appointment makes you realise how
adaptable you have to be to reach the families, I mean for example Ed’s
mum physically can’t remember anything, she just can’t, she can’t. [The
Story Links teacher] rings her up on a Monday and she’ll ring her again
on a Tuesday and she’ll say “Oh I completely forgot...And this I’ve known
in the past but it’s never been quite so clear‐ but having that focus for
that period of weeks. SENCO
She also felt that this group of parents particularly needed support to engage with their child’s
learning:
66
I don’t think that they could have done it without that level of input and
that to me is why a lot of the children are not making the progress, it’s
not that the parents don’t care it’s that they’re absolutely swamped...
trying to keep going. SENCO
4.4.2 Engaging parents who struggle with their own literacy
The poor level of parental literacy in the target group (see para 2.3.3 and appendix 6) extended
to many siblings and wider family members. This was challenging for some of the attending
parents, as engagement with the Story Links programme made such difficulties, which hitherto
perhaps had been kept private, visible. However many of them spoke openly about what the
lack of literacy meant for them. John’s Mum observed
His Dad would probably not be able to read these books (basic readers)
either... Actually saying that my daughter and I were both um dyslexic...
Yes I struggle with mine but I do plod on, but my daughter has all sorts
of help at college and things because of hers.
The husband of the couple who attended the sessions spoke about his own ‘trouble with
reading and writing’ and the reason for his wife’s basic literacy:
My wife is self‐taught, my wife didn’t go to school from the age of 14. I
mean if I got a Council bill I pass it to the wife straight away.
Unfortunately she can only read certain words like ‘court case.’ Rosie’s Dad
When his daughter faced difficulties with learning to read, it reminded him of his own
experience:
She’s got her eyes. She does what I used to do when I was a child
because I remember my mum smacking me round the head and saying
“Will you concentrate for God’s sake, stop looking round the room,” and
I could see that going on, I didn’t smack Rosie round the head but I could
see Rosie do the exact same thing looking round the room... So
obviously you do pass your demons down to your children but since this
reading thing she focuses at the words, don’t she (to wife)?
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Despite his own poor literacy he had felt comfortable in the Story Links sessions and thought
had helped his daughter not to repeat his own pattern of behaviour in school:
She’s really brought us together with the reading because obviously like
where I can’t read and write properly I shy away from it, if you can’t do
something you don’t really, and your member of staff made us feel so
relaxed and very at ease... if someone had done this for me at school,
they just put me in the back of the class and said like he’s the comical
person, you stay there... I always used to crack bad jokes because I
couldn’t read and write properly so my way out was humour and Rosie
started to go that way... Until this lady come along and we started doing
these stories I could see Rosie going that way.
In Beth’s case neither of her parents nor most of her older siblings were literate. However,
despite these difficulties the Story Links teacher said that Mum remained ‘very positive’ in the
sessions and ‘quite apologetic’ that she didn’t actually do any reading at home. He also recalled
ways in which Mum, despite her own problems with literacy, had still tried to encourage Beth
with her reading:
What she did say was that she and Beth went to...a newsagent or a
bookshop and Beth got a book that she read to the rabbit. So this is all
those kinds of very early pre‐reading types of activities, and she
probably had the book upside down and that sort of thing but she
actually read a story to the rabbit. There was once when one of the
older children read to Beth as well but only once. Beth’s SL teacher
4.4.3 Parental engagement with the story metaphor
Parents’ understanding of the use of story metaphor to support emotional development
Underlying the theory of the Story Links programme is the intent for the teachers and parents to
understand the emotional issues the children presented though the story metaphor. Most of the
Story Links teachers reported that parents did recognise how the metaphor of the created
stories reflected emotional and behavioural issues. However, it was evident that some parents
were initially more able to do this than others. Some, like Mark’s Mum, were able to
immediately understand the way in which story metaphor could be used to obliquely address
emotional and behavioural issues:
She did say once that Mark was arguing a lot with his sister at home and
she’d like to do something about that and then another time she said
could she start the story because she felt that Mark had such a lot of
emotional pulls in his life and so I did rather wonder how she was going
to start the story but actually she kept it in the dragon mode. Mark ‘s SL teacher
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Others, like Aaron’s Mum, gradually became more aware of this possibility as the weeks
progressed:
It was clearly quite a new thing for her... initially she just was interested
in what I said about what I’d be thinking about for the next week or the
next starter. But then she, there came a point when she suddenly saw
what was happening...and she gave me three suggestions of issues at
home that she wanted to address. Aaron’s SL teacher
Aaron’s mother, herself, described the stories as being ‘geared’ to ‘things at home, and
behaviour and his sister and things like that and some for school and turn taking and that kind of
stuff.’
However, for some of the parents their thinking seems to have been more about connecting to
the child’s external world rather than their internal emotional states. For instance, Pete’s mum,
although reporting that she and the Story Links teacher would ‘have a little meeting for about
five minutes beforehand to discuss where we go to next‘, had introduced ideas relating more to
his everyday interests such as his birthday, table tennis and card games which he loved, than his
internal emotional world:
In the case of the couple who attended, the Story Links teacher felt they did understand the
metaphor but that this had presented some difficulty for her as they seemed, at times, to use it
to process their own relationship rather than to think about their daughter’s emotional issues. In
fact the father, who had recently had conflicts with neighbours, actually made a comment to
this effect:
I mean if you read in between the lines of the stories you can see there’s
adult problems and dilemmas in there, like with Colin the Chameleon
stealing the dinner... off the windowsill. Rosie’s dad
(See para 4.4.7 for further comments on working with a couple)
Parental anxiety as an obstacle to the child’s expression within the story metaphor
In two cases, the Story Links teachers reported that the parent tried to control or amend the
child’s contribution to the joint story. This had been quite an issue initially with Fred’s mother
but when it was pointed out to her, she was able to alter her approach:
She was sort of putting words into his mouth, she kept interrupting
sometimes [when he was speaking]. So [SL teacher] had a quiet word
and said ‘Let’s just, let the flow go and [TA] and myself will read it back’
and she did, she took it on board. Fred’s TA
The Story Links teacher in this case added that Fred’s Mum, like two other parents, had a
tendency to use her contribution to save the situation in the story rather than developing some
deeper, emotional understanding within the metaphor. Again, as with the issue of interrupting
her son, it seemed mum was quite receptive to ‘a bit of gentle guidance [from the TA] as to how
to contribute to the story’:
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‘She did admit that... I think she found it hard particularly when the story
was about if Fred had said something about Mum. I suppose that is
difficult. If there’s a story about when you’ve lost Mum I suppose you’d
want to prove that you’re a good mum and that you don’t lose your
child and you know you want to stick up for yourself so I can understand
how difficult it could be for her.’ Fred’s SL teacher
Here is the co‐created story, referred to in the above comment, where the main character,
Sammy Squirrel, loses his Mum:

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Sammy the squirrel was by a tree

feeling very angry. Sammy had lost
his mum and could not see her.
An acorn fell on his head, he wished
his mum were there to kiss his head
better.
Sammy was getting more and more

angry because his mum had left him.
He hit the tree with his paw again
and again but did not feel his paw
hurting him. Sammy could not feel
the pain. He felt angry and very, scared.
He went up and up the tree to look for his mum. Up and up he went but he still
could not see his mum.
Sammy hit the tree again and again. Poor Sammy! His paw was now hurting. Then
below him he saw his mum and he cried with joy. He ran down the tree and gave his
mum a BIG, BIG HUG.
In fact it was clear, from what the Story Links teacher says below that the pupil as well as the
mother was aware that his contribution to the story related to his own experience:
And in that story, afterwards Fred said “Well I did lose you Mum didn’t I
once?” And he told us the whole situation, I think it was in a shop wasn’t
it and you know he went one way and she went the other, and I mean it
happens to us all, and she did feel uncomfortable about that and what
he was going to say. Fred’s SL teacher
Parental anxiety about violence in the story metaphor
Two of the parents appeared to have been shocked by the violence of some of their child’s
contributions to the story line. For instance, Ian’s Mum, when pointing to a story in which Ian’s
contribution was that the main character killed someone, said ‘when that came out of Ian’s
mouth you just think “Oh my gosh!” what is he thinking?’
Here is the opening story of the story she referred to:
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Story LinksT: Dino the dragon was in his garden. He was angry.
Ian: He had killed a man. He wanted to plant a tree but
did not know how to do it without burning the tree.
Mum: He was sad because he had killed a man and did not
know how to plant a tree without burning it.
The Story Links teacher also remembered that Mum had been quite ‘anxious to sort of temper
the story a little bit’ at this point and described how she encouraged her to accept whatever Ian
contributed without feeling she had to put it right.
After Ian had started that first story with the man getting killed, she
wanted [to intervene] which I guess is fair enough. I mean I tried to
explain that it had to be what he wanted in the story. I didn’t want her
to feel that she’d got to make everything wonderful that if people were
getting killed or whatever that she suddenly had to somehow make it all
right.
When Ian, himself was asked why he liked this story, which he had chosen as one of his
favourites, he replied simply, ‘I like people dying’. The teacher, while honouring the child’s
contribution, nevertheless also tried to ‘pull the story around as it as it went’ in order to bring it
to a more positive resolution. This is evident in the final part of the story where the emphasis is
on planting a tree to commemorate the man who had been killed by Dino and on buying a water
pistol, which can be seen as a metaphor for a means to quell the dragon’s fiery anger, rather
than on killing:
He liked big green trees best so he went to ask his mum if he could buy a tree.
He went with mum and bought a tall tree in one shop.
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It was a Christmas tree.
He went into a shop and bought a water pistol.
Dino and his mum took the tree home and it was so tall it went through the ceiling.
Dino did not burn it because he had the water pistol.
In her final interview Mum now seemed to be aware of the need to accept Ian’s contributions
and was also able to relate the metaphor in later stories to Ian’s feeling state saying ‘I suppose
he expressed himself naturally’. The Story Links teacher was impressed that despite Mum’s
initial anxiety about Ian’s contributions, ‘she did engage in the stories and I think she quite
enjoyed it in the end.’
4.4.4 Engagement of parent in hearing child read at home
Changes in home reading patterns
As shown in Figure 11, prior to the intervention only two of the parents heard their child read at
least twice a week, with two‐thirds of the parents saying that they heard their child read less
than once a month.
Figure 11: Frequency of reading to parent at home pre and post Story Links
This improved dramatically during the Story Links programme with eight parents hearing their
child read at home at least twice a week. Of the four pupils whose reading patterns did not
change, two of these were already reading at least twice a week before the programme and
these were also the pupils with the highest initial reading score on the NARA (see 4.5.5 below).
Just over half of the parents heard their child read the stories at least twice a week; five of these
had said that they did not hear their child read at all before the Story Links programme. In all
these cases theses, frequencies were corroborated by the pupils in separate interviews.
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In the case of the couple there was a discrepancy between what each parent said regarding
frequency of reading at home. The mother said they never heard their daughter read prior to
the intervention but the father said they heard her once a week. In another case there was a
discrepancy between what the parent and child said about reading frequency. In both cases the
lower frequency was included in the data as it was felt that the discrepancies may have been
due to the fact that some parents feel guilty about not hearing their child read (see also
Individual Profile B).
Reasons for lack of reading prior to Story Links programme
The majority of the parents spoke about their child’s reluctance to sit down and engage with
reading. The following comments were representative of the group:
What I find with Pete is he won’t sit down and read. Pete’s Mum
He doesn’t want to do it. To try to actually get him to read a book... Harry’s Mum
In some cases where the parent had insisted the child read at home this often became a cause
of conflict, with the child unable to cope with being corrected:
The trouble is I can sit and read with him but then he gets stroppy with
me... he doesn’t like me to, you know to correct him. Ross’s foster carer
For some parents, like Harry’s Mum, this conflict had discouraged them from reading with their
child:
Sometimes I think should I back off about his reading because rather
than saying to him all the time have you done it, and he’ll think ‘I’m not
going to do[it]’
Only one parent said they heard their child read once a week or more and this was the pupil
who had the highest initial reading score. However, even this parent said: ‘It can very quickly
become a chore for him so... I feel I have to tread very delicately to stop him feeling
demoralised.’
For a discussion of the pupils’ engagement with reading at home during the Story Links
programme (see 4.5.1 below).
4.4.5 Parent confidence and skills ‐ and lack of them
A majority of the parents felt they lacked the skills to support their child in learning to read.
Clearly the three attending parents with poor literacy themselves fell into this category but a
number of the other parents lacked confidence in supporting their child’s reading. For instance,
Ed’s mother who said that, although reading was her ‘thing’, she still didn’t feel confident to
help her children with this. She spoke about previously trying to support Ed’s older sister with
reading and that this had led to emotional clashes:
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‘I got very, very frustrated with her not understanding and it actually
was very detrimental to her because I was very frustrated with her and
that’s left me with a, I don’t know what, a block or something.’
In supporting Ed she had become ‘very wary about [it], I’m worried about doing more damage
because I know what I’m like‐ I tend to get quite frustrated.’
John’s Mum spoke in particular about her confusion about different approaches to teaching
reading:
Sometimes you feel that you’re teaching him the wrong theories...So it’s
no good.... my two big kids all learnt letter land, and... John did
phonetics and I couldn’t get phonetics.
Learning from teachers about reading
Some parents spoke about how the sessions had helped them to develop their own teaching
skills. Ian’s Mum was one of those who talked about this in some detail:
It was very interesting to see how [his SL teacher] taught him and it
helped me because she would prompt in a certain way and we covered
up each line so he could just see that line and if he followed it with a pen
or a finger, so of course I learned that... and also the prompting to sound
out the words...It has been fantastic... because I’m not a teacher, I’m
just a mum, but to see a teacher in action it helped me.
Several of the parents in the post interviews expressed an interest in finding out more about
how children learn to read. For instance, Harry’s Mum wondered why her son could copy‐write
a text but not be able to read it back and thought ‘It would be interesting to talk to [the SENCO]
about that a bit more actually.’
Gaining confidence in storymaking
A number of parents also mentioned their initial anxiety about participating in the story‐making
activity. However, all reported that they had become more confident as the sessions progressed:
I struggle wondering about how to put a story together, so it’s kind of a
mental block for me. So for me it’s been a great experience because I
feel I’ve actually gained a bit of confidence myself. Mark’s mum
It’s hard for me to put my brain in gear so sometimes I was a bit
stumped but he came up a gear ‐ it was handy with all four people in
there and seeing which way the story went. Ed’s Mum
I felt embarrassed. Yeah, especially the first two, because the first story
line was already thought up and it was emotion... and when you’re put
on the spot like that I found it very difficult to think in his language... I
was OK after that. Ian’s NH Mum
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Parental self‐esteem
A number of teachers and the parents themselves spoke about the increase in parents’ general
self‐esteem. One of the Story Links teachers spoke particularly about Lisa’s mother, whose
attendance the school had initially been most concerned about ‘because she kept coming up
with reasons why she couldn’t come’. However, in his opinion, she had ‘blossomed’ and of the
four parents attending Story Links at her school, she was ‘the one who has always remembered’.
In fact, he thought that ‘the mother has changed more than Lisa.’ His observations about Lisa’s
mother were supported by the SENCO who thought her confidence to establish appropriate
boundaries for Lisa had also improved:
It’s been really positive for her (Lisa’s) mum to come in, really positive...
also I would say she’s putting more boundaries down with Lisa than
perhaps she didn’t have before...Lisa would kind of butt in or change the
subject, and now she’s saying ‘No, no Lisa, this is my bit now, you need
to listen,’ and she’s doing that a lot more, which is great. SENCO
One Story Links teacher also talked about how important it was for the parents’ self‐esteem to
see that their child was achieving something in school, as they could easily feel that their child’s
difficulties reflected on them:
I suppose it was in a way building up the positive side of her son, which
actually I think probably, because she’d been criticised quite a lot, well
not her personally, but he’d been in trouble such a lot I felt it was quite
important. Mark’s SL teacher
4.4.6 Working with a couple
The only couple who took part in the Story Links evaluation programme presented a particular
issue for this programme in that the focus on their child frequently shifted to a focus on their
relationship. They were keen to take part to help their daughter, Rosie, to improve her reading.
According to the SENCO Rosie’s emotional and behavioural issues were ‘all internal’ and added
that she seemed ‘terribly insecure’. She self‐harmed by scratching her face and pulling out her
hair; in fact the Story Links teacher said, ‘she wears a sort of red bandanna because she’s quite
bald.’ Rosie had never been excluded by the school but sometimes she failed to come into
school because she ‘felt upset’.
The parents attended eight out of the ten sessions together. The father, who had a physical
disability, was unable to read and the mother had just low level literacy skills. At first the Story
Links teacher thought it was ‘quite nice’ that both parents wanted to come to the sessions.
However, she soon found the dynamic in the sessions quite difficult to handle. She said that the
main difficulty was that often the father ‘dominated the story so it didn’t matter what you
started with, he would take it off on his own track’.
While she felt that Rosie’s parents were aware of the way story metaphor could be used to
reflect feelings, she thought that the ideas introduced by the father were more often focused on
his own feelings and the dynamic between him and his wife, than on the feelings of his
daughter. She talked about a particular story where this had been evident:
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We had one story, which was about Lily the Lizard who had heard good
news. So Rosie said the good news was that she and Brian had decided
that they could afford to have a baby... then he comes in and he says on
one of his goes… [ Brian] looked at these eggs, which Lily had lovingly
laid and decided that they were alligator eggs and that he now had the
proof that Lily had been cheating on him... Rosie’s mother’s go was
something like ‘Well he had another think coming if he thought she was
going to have six (more babies to look after), she decided to put them in
a basket and go and throw all of them over a cliff.’
However, the Story Links teacher had managed to write this story up sensitively, omitting the
rejecting attitude to the baby reptiles. Her final version was as follows:
Lily and Brian Make Plans
Lily was sitting in the back of her cave. She was feeling excited. She had heard
some good news. The good news was that Brian said they could have a baby. Lily
dug a smooth, round hole in the sand at the back of the cave. She laid some round
white eggs. She covered them with the clean sand. Lily counted the round white
eggs. There were six! Lily said that they would need lots of cots and blankets and
toys for the new babies.
The smooth eggs began to crack and hatch. Lily and Brian looked at the baby
lizards. They looked liked alligators. They had big teeth and big eyes. ‘What will
we do with such big babies?’ asked Lily and Brian.
Lily and Brian decided to make a plan. Lily was clever. She loved the babies. They
decided to keep the babies until they found a new home.
The Story Links teacher went on to reflect that, as Rosie was clearly very anxious, the metaphor
of ‘throwing the eggs over the cliff edge’ was ‘not helpful really’ as it could be construed as
rejecting of the young ones in a family.
Although Dad had been very positive about the sessions, she felt that he was not ‘able to put
himself into her [his daughter’s] shoes at all’. This was supported by comments from the TA who
said that ‘sometimes it was quite difficult to keep the focus on Rosie’ because of Dad. The Story
LinksT also mentioned that Dad was often ‘more affectionate towards his wife than his daughter
in the sessions.’
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The Story Links teacher concluded by saying, that she ‘just wasn’t experienced enough to have
both [parents]’ and that ‘when we do the next round we’re going to be much more specific
about that [working with just one parent].’
4.4.7 What about the dads?
Mothers were the predominant parent attending the sessions with their children. Only one
father attended the Story Links programme and this was as part of the couple discussed above.
In fact, eight of the pupils (all boys except one) did not live with their biological father (see
Appendix 6: Overview of the pupils presenting issues and their family context).
It was clear from what both pupils and parents said that many of the pupils had complex feelings
about their relationship with their fathers, whether present or absent. For some, like Ian, there
was anxiety around conflict:
They clash... my husband hasn’t any patience, and Ian hasn’t either so
I’m the go‐between, the mediator, the peacemaker yes. Ian’s Mum
For others, particularly for those not in contact with their biological father, there was a sense of
abandonment or, as in the case of Fred, confusion:
Fred’s got a different dad to the others [his siblings]... I think he lived
with him when he was much younger, but then says, I don’t see my dad
at all and I’ve got a new dad... so that must be quite tricky for him, it
doesn’t seem clear who his dad is, his (step) dad who is black African is
his new dad. Fred’s SL teacher
In addition, there seemed to be few positive male role models with good literacy for those boys
who were in contact with their father: four fathers were illiterate and one step‐father could not
read English. Many of the boys’ relationships with their fathers appeared ambivalent as often
the pupils also ‘idolised’ them:
Dad, granddad and either an elder brother or an uncle don’t read or
write and Mum says [Harry] seems to idolise these male figures of the
family. Harry’s SL teacher
Including the absent father in the story
An interesting development in a number of cases was the way in which the father, though
absent from the sessions, came to be represented in the actual stories through a father figure
character. Pete was one of several pupils whose stories included a central father figure
character and his case illustrates this point well.
Pete’s story: a yearning for Dad’s attention
Pete lived with both his biological parents but his mother said that he and his dad had ‘quite a
conflict in their relationship...because they’re very similar’ and that they were ‘like two peas in a
pod really.’ She talked about the ambivalence in the father/son relationship saying that while
they ‘do rub off badly on each other’, Pete ‘actually adores his dad’ and was definitely a ‘man’s
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boy’. She then spoke about how Pete’s feelings towards his dad had been reflected in the
metaphor of some of his stories about Gordon the Gorilla. In one of these a gorilla called Big
George who, like Pete, has no friends to play with and keeps ‘picking on’ other gorillas. The story
continues:
All the other animals had come to fear and be

scared of Big George. When he told them his
story he had tears in his eyes. Big George explained
to all the others: “It is not my fault that I am so
mean. My Dad’s name is Godzilla. My Dad will not
play with me
Every time I ask him he won’t play.”
The Story Links teacher also highlighted this story and said that in the session, there had been a
bit of a joke between Pete and his Mum because Godzilla is what they sometimes called his dad
at home. Mum was able to reflect with some insight on this story:
He knows it himself because there is a few problems with him and his
dad... he always wants to do things with his dad and of course his dad
always can’t.
The Story Links teacher had suggested a possible resolution to the conflict in the story with the
following ending:
Big George’s dad saw him. He called him over to him, “I decided to take the day
off to buy a skateboard for you. Come over and see it.” Big George was so happy.
Mum said that she was keen for his Dad to read the stories but this had not happened as yet:
I’ve got them all at home. I keep saying to his dad to have a look at them
but...I wonder if he realises what we’ve actually, I mean I have sort of
explained it to him but whether he was sort of listening at the time I
don’t know.
Mark’s story: anxiety around parental separation
In this second case, a mother, who appeared to have had a difficult separation from her
husband, came in one week with a story opening that introduced a father figure for the first
time in the sequence of stories. Her son spent about a third of his time at his Dad’s and the rest
with her. The Story Links teacher recounted how a few weeks into the programme Mum had
come in saying ‘I’d like to begin the story today because I think he’s got these emotional pulls in
his life and I think it might be a good idea.’ Her opening went as follows:
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Long ago there was a dragon called Fly. One day he was asked to do something
very special by his daddy dragon. That was for Fly to look after the treasure that
his daddy had been guarding whilst he himself went on holiday.
The Story Links teacher recalled that Mark followed this with:
“Yes”, said Fly and jumped up into the air. His daddy warned him,” tomorrow you’ll
have to begin guarding it”.
The Story Links teacher said ‘That was all he said for that bit which was unusual for him because
he usually rambled off.’ The story continued with the daddy going to the dragon runway by a
control tower and taking off as illustrated in his picture below.
The next time the group met, Mark had said ‘I don’t want to do another story about a dragon;
they’re too difficult to draw.’ But the Story Links teacher pointed out that ‘actually it’s not
difficult at all, I mean what he’s done is easy [to draw].’ It appears that to reconnect with the
theme of this story again may have been emotionally overwhelming in that the feelings aroused
by the daddy dragon who has taken off may have been too close to the feelings he had about his
father leaving the family home.
Actual involvement of fathers
In two cases the Story Links programme led to fathers, both of whom were separated from their
wives, coming into their son’s school for the first time. A few weeks into sessions with Aaron,
the story began to be sent to his father who he visited at weekends. Aaron’s Mum reported that
he would hear Aaron read the stories twice and that ‘his Dad enjoyed it because it meant that
he could feel a bit more included.’ Aaron’s father, who had never been in school before, then
attended the school disco with his son soon after the Story Links sessions finished.
John’s parents were also separated. While John’s dad did not hear his son read when he visited,
as his own literacy was too poor, he was the reason given by John for his motivation to learn to
read: ‘If your dad can’t read, and you’re going somewhere, you can at least read it for him.’ In
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the initial session John who was effectively a carer for his Mum, was keen that his Dad might
come if his Mum couldn’t make it: ‘Wel,l I don’t know if my Mum can make it most times... Or
my Dad could come. Yeah, my Dad, my Dad hasn’t ever been to my school.’
John’s father, like Aaron’s, also visited the school for the first time during the Story Links
sessions to discuss his son’s progress with teachers.
However, in a third case, Harry’s mother had asked his separated father to attend the week she
was on holiday but in fact he had not shown up.
4.4.8 Impact on Home / School Relationship
Three‐quarters of the parents and all the teachers thought the home/school relationship had
improved to some degree during the Story Links programme, as shown in Figure 12. It is
interesting to note that in comparison to the overall benefit of Story Links programme (see 4.7.2
below) where the parents rated the benefit higher than the teachers, with respect to the
home/school relationship, it is the teachers who felt there was most improvement.
Figure 12: Parent’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Impact on Home/School
Relationship
Specific observations of the impact on the home/school relationship
i) Some relationships good already
The three parents who chose the category ‘no change’, all said this was because their
relationship with the school was ‘good already’ as did two of the five parents who chose ‘some
improvement’ category. Despite this claim, this judgement was supported by only one of the
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Story Links teachers. This may have been because the parents did not want to acknowledge that
their past relationship with the school had been difficult.
ii) Turning around difficult relationships
From comments made by the teachers at least half the parents before the start of the Story
Links programme had had either very little contact with the school (also see SENCO comments in
para 4.4.1) or a confrontational relationship, often described euphemistically as a little ‘tricky’:
‘When T was ill we couldn’t contact (Mum). Never seen dad’. (Aaron’s classteacher); ‘I think she
felt quite defensive and that the school wasn’t doing enough.’ (Mark’s classteacher)
Two parents were open about the difficult relationship they previously had with the school and
both thought that the Story Links programme had helped turned this around:
John’s got behaviour problems so my interaction with the school was
horrible all the time. The only interaction was “John’s been bad, this has
happened, that’s happened” and that’s the only links I’ve had with the
school....now it’s nice to look forward to coming in, in the afternoon, we
all sit down, we talk about bits and pieces, and John glows and picks up
his reading and is eager to tell us his story. John’s Mum
We actually enjoy coming into the school now... I used to hate this place.
I still don’t love it, (but) I do enjoy Tuesdays (Story Links day). Rosie’s Dad
iii) Engagement in a wider discussion relating to the child’s welfare
In another case where there was a ‘tricky’ relationship with the parent, the SENCO sought
specifically to use the intervention to provide an opportunity to discuss the child’s general
welfare with his mother.
‘She’s engaging which is good; there are some issues I need to tackle her
on as well, which I feel a bit wary... But it’s just trying to get him in first
of all and sort of get that relationship established and then we can start,
and we’re leading this sort of group so I can do the other stuff [general
welfare issues]...From the past we’ve learned that she can be quite
volatile’. Fred’s SENCO
This seems to have worked because Fred’s Mum was one of the parents who said there had
been a ‘very significant improvement’ in the home/school relationship, attributing this to the
fact ‘that I got to know teachers, I suppose. Normally I’d just drop them off and then pick them
up [referring to other siblings as well] at the end of the day.’ This improved relationship with the
school was supported by the SENCO and the Story Links teacher, both of whom thought that the
major benefit of Story Links for Fred had been the home‐school links that had developed.
iv) Helping parents re‐frame their own experience of school
There were other similar examples of how the Story Links programme had improved home
school relationships where previously there had been difficulties but this next observation
suggests that the intervention had another effect ‐ in helping a parent realise that the school
experience for her son might be different to her own:
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She is the sort of parent who still thinks back to her own experiences
isn’t she and thinks that school is a bad place...And so I think it’s
overcome that probably with her... I mean she says hello to the Head
now which is quite an achievement!... and she knows all the office staff. Harry’s SENCO
v) Role of the TA in supporting home /school relationship
The TAs link with the child also helped to improve home –school relationships with parents in
forming a connection as part of a team where the parents could see that the school and they
were working together for the benefit of the child. As Lisa’s TA commented, ‘I haven’t worked
with parents much before... it’s been nice to be able to see they want to help as well’.
Maintaining home/school relationship post‐Story Links
This improved home/school relationship engendered by the Story Links programme seemed to
have such a benefit for the child that at least two of the parents expressed an intention to
continue to come into school after the programme finished. One was the parent of Mark:
I’m slightly more in touch with the school and having been here a little
bit more and seeing how you do things...It has been interesting, to the
extent that perhaps I can do something else... either with Mark or I
could come in to read to the children... I’m interested in keeping in
touch. Mark mum
The second parent, who in the pre‐interview had indicated that it was ‘very hard’ being Pete’s
Mum, ‘ and that she found him ‘ 24/7’, was surprised at how much he had appreciated her
coming into school. She had continued to come into school each week, once Story Links had
finished at the time previously used for the sessions.
Several parents expressed regret that the sessions were ending and some were keen to do more
sessions with their child:
‘I’ll probably miss it now’. Lisa’s Mum
‘Actually I’d do it again. Ian’s Mum
‘I wish he could do it again for another ten weeks. [laughing] Ed’s Mum
One seemed rather annoyed that the sessions had finished, saying:
I’m concerned that this is now stopping...In terms of I’m coming to
school every week, we’ll deal with all sorts of issues...Not only the
reading and, and that’s all going to stop... that does worry me...I don’t, I
can’t see of doing this by myself. John’s Mum
Two parents were keen to do the Story Links programme with siblings:
I did ask if I could do it with my son Rosie’s dad
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I’ve got a younger one as well so if it ever came up again I’d like to do it
with him. Pete’s Mum
4.5 Impact on pupils’ engagement with learning
4.5.1 Impact on pupils’ engagement with reading at home
As detailed in para 4.4.4, the frequency of reading with their child at home improved during the
programme. When pupils had read twice a week at home, parents thought their child’s reading
had improved and all particularly highlighted the child’s improved attitude to reading:
What’s changed is that he now happily picks up a book and starts
reading... he knows what it’s about and he gets the enjoyment out of it.
He knows what it says... if you see things around, even on a billboard or
whatever, in a glance he has read what’s there, he’s understood what it
said... it could be several lines but in no time he has read it and has
understood what it said. Mark’s Mum
It was more of a chore before wasn’t it (to wife)....Yeah. It was like she‐
you made her, you had to make her read... But ever since she’s done this
reading and writing course thing it’s more a thing she has to do to
herself. She loves it, she wants to do it. Rosie’s Dad
He gets stuck on words but then he asks for help. But it’s the fact that he
now wants to and it’s like he’s clicked with being able to retain a
story...and putting it together in his head. Ed’s Mum
(See also individual pupil profiles A & B)
Ian’s mother said how previously he ‘wouldn’t read at all because even the books he was given
here he wouldn’t read to me. It was embarrassment, it really was, he didn’t want to. It was
frustration I suppose as well.’
However, he had started reading to her twice a week during the Story Links programme and she
had been quite ‘amazed’ at how he had started to want to read at home. In fact she got quite
emotional in the interview as she remembered hearing him trying to read on his own for the
first time:
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The second week I was amazed, it was 6 o’clock in the morning which is
his usual time and I heard him talking to himself which he normally does
and I listened and he was, you could tell, he was reading. And he was
reading a Doctor Seuss book... So I left it a few minutes and then I went
into his room and I said to him, “Are you reading?” And he said “Yes, I’m
trying to, I’m missing out the words I don’t know.” And I said “That’s
fine, fantastic.” And he has never ever done that before... I was choked.
It was wonderful... it was amazing, it really was... So he’s enjoyed it and
it’s made a difference to him, he’s started to sound out, and he’s also
chosen to get interested and more confident. Ian’s Mum
Despite this improvement she still had to be careful to ‘to pick the moment’ to ask him to read
to her.
In two cases parents had heard their child read for just one or two weeks but had not been able
to maintain the routine despite the encouragement from school. Fred’s mother was one of
these and the Story Links teacher said that Mum was ‘honest’ and would say ‘No, we haven’t
done it this week’. One week the Story Links teacher emphasised to Mum how important it was
to hear her child read and then ‘that week when he did it at home, he read it all fantastically…. it
made such a difference.’ But she added:
It was [only] that one week where we saw that glimmer... we saw the
impact of that one week and it was just he came in and... obviously
there were some words that he couldn’t do but he could, he just read
it...It was just like another child...and it is a shame because we prayed so
much, hoping that she would really take on board the impact that it had
had. Fred’s SL teacher
After this one week, the Story Links teacher said there was ‘always an excuse’ from Fred’s
mother although she had said that Fred had read to his brother; but Fred didn’t seem to recall
this in his separate interview. However, despite this, Mum did attend every one of the 10
sessions.
In contrast to Fred’s mother, John’s mother had started hear her son read every day during the
programme. While this had mainly been positive the Story Links teacher expressed a concern
about Mum, who began devising alphabets and highlighting systems, ‘expecting too much from
him in terms of reading.’ (See pupil profile A fro more details)
4.5.2 The significance of pupils’ ownership of the stories
Ownership of the stories was a crucial motivation for the pupils to engage in reading the stories.
The intervention was designed to particularly foster pupils’ emotional investment, and hence
interest, in the co‐created stories.
The majority of the parents thought that the ‘ownership’ pupils felt towards the stories had
indeed been a significant factor in their improved engagement with reading. For instance, Ross’s
foster mother who had previously been so concerned at how ‘stroppy’ he would get when asked
to read to her, said that his ‘stroppiness’ had been entirely absent when reading one of the
Story Links stories to her at home because ‘he had something to do with it’:
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‘He helped do it didn’t he and it was all his effort and I think also he
knew what it was about as well, he knew more about the story before
he started reading it, where I think a fresh book he doesn’t know, and I
think it’s different, I think it’s because he’s enjoyed doing this. Ross’s foster carer
Other parents also mentioned the child’s ownership of the stories as being a key factor in their
interest in reading them:
It was our story, it was our club, our book club, so yes that ownership of
his story worked yes. Ian’s Mum
If I’d have gone to the library to pick out books that he could read like
this he wouldn’t let me, he wouldn’t get them … So, the fact that he’s
put the input in ‐ I think that made a big difference. John’s Mum
4.5.3 What got in the way of reading at home during the Story Links programme?
There were a number of issues that were mentioned by pupils, parents and teachers, as to what
got in the way of the pupil reading to their parent at home.
Demands of siblings
One of these was that siblings had disturbed the home reading sessions. Mark, although he did
read to his mother twice a week, said ‘I don’t really like it, I like reading to myself... because I’ve
got my sister’s scream in the background.’
For Beth, her siblings also seemed to undermine all efforts to support her reading at home:
We’ve had considerable trouble when we’ve sent the story home with
her. It’s things like the story went under the fridge, the dog ate the
story, one of the older boys tore the story up... actually I decided in the
end to get her a little tape recorder. Beth’s SL teacher
However, even the tape recorder provided was not a solution as one of the brothers then taped
over the stories. This case showed the commitment of the Story Links teacher who then took
time to re‐tape all the stories ‘and then seal it so they couldn’t tape over the stories.’
No time
Parental availability for reading at home was an issue that affected several of the group. For
instance Pete said, ‘I don’t read stories (to Mum) at home, it’s too busy. She’s too busy, ironing,
washing, but I read to her in sessions’. It seemed that Pete’s M. was more able to hear her child
read within the school environment as she continued coming into school to hear him read each
Friday after the Story Links sessions finished. However she did mention that at home ‘what I find
he’s doing now is he likes reading the newspaper... he actually sits there and starts reading it’.
Ed’s Mum who ran a small holding also said that they had ‘struggled to find time at home’
because of their ‘hectic lives’ which had recently included ‘the lambing kicking in’. She said how
she would ‘crawl into bed and I’m like ‘oh damn we haven’t done the reading.’”
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Lack of time was also highlighted by Fred’s Mum as the reason for not doing the reading at
home:
It’s all so time‐consuming because sometimes I don’t finish work till
seven at night, so by the time I get home he’s sort of getting ready for
bed and I’d rather he wasn’t sat up reading stories all night. Fred’s Mum
Fred himself also spoke about this, saying: ‘Me and my mum didn’t got time together
much...Sometimes her had to work. And sometimes her too tired.’
Parents’ copy of the story not reaching home in time
A few of the parents, mentioned that some weeks the story had not reached them in time to do
the reading. One SL teacher had overcome these difficulties by emailing the story home which
the parent said had worked very well.
4.5.4 Impact on pupils’ engagement with reading in school
As described in section 4.5.1 above, the majority of parents thought their child had showed an
improved willingness to engage with reading at home. The majority of the Story Links teachers
and many of the classteachers also mentioned how pupils had begun to be more interested in
reading:
He became more interested in being able to read, he became much
more enthusiastic about wanting to read it. And very pleased that he
could, he felt he could read it. John’s SL teacher
He was ill yesterday and couldn’t come to school, so I said what did you
do and he said “I lay in bed and I read a book.” And he sort of showed
me how thick it was...and I thought oh gosh, what a change because
certainly...in July he never could have read a book. Mark’s SL teacher
He now takes pride in sharing his reading and literacy work. Pete’s class teacher
4.5.5 Impact on pupils’ standardised reading scores
Standardised reading score: Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA)
There was minimal progress in the pupils’ reading ability as measured by the NARA for the group
as a whole as shown in Figure 13 which details the scores for accuracy and comprehension pre
and post Story Links. (Results in red indicate an increase in pupil’s score and those in blue a
decrease.) Only one pupil, Mark, made significant progress for both accuracy and
comprehension and this was the pupil with the highest initial NARA score.
Analysis of NARA results
Pre intervention: Accuracy and comprehension
Two‐thirds (eight) of the pupils failed to score at all (i.e. below 6.01) on the NARA scale for both
accuracy and comprehension pre intervention.
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Post intervention: Accuracy
Two of the eight pupils who had recorded no score pre intervention managed to just score on
the NARA at 6.01 (68% confidence band 5.07 to 6.08) and 6.03 (68% confidence band 5.10 to
6.10). Two of the four pupils who had scored on the NARA in the pre test increased their reading
age by 3 months and 11 months respectively, with the remaining two pupils showing no change
in their reading accuracy.
Post Story Links programme: Comprehension
Three of the eight pupils who had recorded no score for comprehension pre intervention were
on the NARA scale for comprehension post intervention with scores of 6.01 (68% confidence
band 5.08 to 6.04), 6.01 and 6.07 (68% confidence band 6.04 to 6.09). Of the four pupils who
scored on the NARA pre test, one pupil showed no change, one showed a minimal increase of
one month and two showed significant improvements in comprehension of 11 and 24 months
respectively. (See Neale Analysis of Reading Ability Neale Analysis of Reading Ability Neale
Analysis of Reading Ability methodology Neale Analysis of Reading Ability Neale Analysis of
Reading Ability Neale Analysis of Reading Ability for discussion of 68% confidence band).
Standardised score and percentile rank
When the pupils’ ages were factored in, the standardised scores and percentile ranks for
accuracy show a decrease for two pupils and an increase for just one. The standardised scores
and percentile ranks for comprehension scores showed an increase for 3 pupils and a decrease
for one pupil.
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Figure 13: Neale Analysis of Reading Ability pre and post Story Links intervention

Reading age Standardised score National percentile Reading age Standardised score National percentile
rank rank
Name Age at Test Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post
pre test interval
Aaron 9.05 19 wks <6.01 6.03 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 6.07 71 1st
<70 3rd
John 9.10 12 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st
Mark 8.07 14 wks 8.01 9.00 96 101 40th 52nd 7.07 9.07 104 24th
89 60th
Pete 10.09 21 wks 7.01 7.01 76 72 6th 3rd 6.10 7.08 78 1st
<70 7th
Rosie 9.04 12 wks <6.01 = 6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 <6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st
Ed 10.01 12 wks 6.03 6.06 <70 <70 1st 1st 6.10 6.10 73 3rd
72 4th
Lisa 8.06 12 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 <6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st
Beth 9.03 12 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 <6.01 <70 1st st
<70 1
Fred 7.00 23 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 <6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st
Ian 10.08 11 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 <6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st
Ross 9.02 17 wks 7.02 7.02 85 81 16 11 7.00 7.01 78 12
82 7
Harry 9.01 14 wks <6.01 <6.01 <70 <70 1st 1st <6.01 =6.01 <70 1st
<70 1st

Note: The NARA reading age scale starts at 6.01 for both accuracy and comprehension.
Red = increase | Blue = decrease
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Development of early‐reading skills
As two thirds of the pupils failed to register on the NARA pre the intervention, the majority of
the group were at a very early stage of reading. For instance, nine‐year old Beth, according to
her TA, ‘couldn’t read practically any words –even her name’ before the intervention. Because
of this the TA explained how they had adapted the structure for Beth in the TA sessions and
instead of reading the stories she had worked on a list of high frequency words. It seems that
this had worked well with the TA reporting that her ‘improvement has been absolutely
amazing... she can read all these words [on the list]’.
Ian’s classteacher spoke about how he had started to focus on trying to sound out words:
He’ll now sit and he does attempt to spell out words, sound out words...
you can see him looking down the page as well to try and work out what
that word is. Ian’s classteacher
And Harry’s classteacher said that, although he was still not an independent reader, he had
recently ‘started to pick up books and pretend read’.
4.5.6 Impact on pupils’ attitude to reading
The results of the Likert rating scale on the impact of the intervention on pupils’ reading skills,
completed by teachers and parents, are shown in Figure 14. Despite the small progress
indicated on the NARA for the group as a whole, both teachers and parents thought that all of
the pupils had made some progress with their reading with their comments focusing mainly on
the change in pupils’ attitude to reading.
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Figure 14: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on Impact on Pupils’ Reading
There was some discrepancy between parents and teachers views, with those of the
professionals, perhaps unsurprisingly, corresponding most closely to the NARA results. For
example, Lisa’s mother thought her daughter had made ‘very significant improvement’ while the
Story Links teacher selected only ‘some improvement’.
All the TAs reported that pupils had been happy to come out and work with them on their
reading task between sessions. Here is what Rosie’s TA had to say about how Rosie’s reading
had progressed:
Her reading has improved so much it actually shocked me. When she
came to read to me... I was very prepared to jump in but she was fine...
if you have a look at this story she’s got three pages...she might get
stuck on a few odd words where maybe she lost the line...but absolutely
brilliant.
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4.5.7 Impact on pupils’ engagement with learning in school
Impact on hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in the classroom
There appeared to be a reduction in hyperactivity and attention difficulties in the classroom for
the majority of the pupils according to the Goodman’s SDQ as shown in Figure 15. Of the seven
pupils in the ‘very high’ category for hyperactivity and inattention in the classroom pre
intervention, only one remained in this category post intervention.
Figure 15: Goodman's SDQ for impact on hyperactivity and attentional difficulties
Key: 0‐5 = Close to average; 6= Slightly raised; 7‐8= High; 9‐10= Very High;
Two of the pupils, Fred and Lisa, showed a very dramatic improvement in their attention in the
classroom, and their cases are discussed in more detail in sections 4.1.3 and 4.2.1 respectively.
Pupil engagement with educational tasks in Story Links sessions
As mentioned in para 4.3.3, all the Story Links teachers reported that pupils had behaved very
well in the Story Links sessions. This section will focus on how pupils engaged with the
educational tasks that included reading, sharing feelings and co‐creating stories, in the sessions.
Some engaged well with from the outset whereas others, as might be expected given the target
group, had taken one or two sessions to settle into the activity:
The first three sessions he didn’t... find it easy to give an idea... [but]
actually as the weeks went on he enjoyed it more and more. Aaron’s Mum
A few of the pupils needed to be reminded to listen and not to interrupt when it was their
parent’s turn to speak. This is what Lisa’s SL teacher had to say about this:
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First of all whenever it was her turn she (Lisa) would sit there saying ‘I
don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say,’ and minutes would
go by then as soon as it was her Mum’s turn she would interrupt her and
tell her what to say or ask her for things, you know ‘Can I have £1 to buy
this? I need this, I need that.’ Sometimes her mum... would stop and it
would go on to ‘You had £1 yesterday, and I’m not made of money.’...So
I kind of stopped, I said right at the beginning, think that you, let your
mum have her turn and we’ll save this for the end of the session.’ And
she still did it for two more times‐but that has stopped. Lisa’s SL teacher
Others, like Fred and Beth, struggled at first to come up with an idea for their contribution to
the story but did manage to engage:
He would take time to think about things but (then) he would be OK. Fred’s mum
I think Beth found the actual exercise quite difficult because she had to
use her imagination and she had to verbalise a situation which was
actually quite a challenge for her really but she did wait her turn...she
didn’t interrupt....and her behaviour in the sessions was very good...
there was plenty of laughing and joking and so on but when we got
down to the business of the story it was work time so she did that. Beth’s SL teacher
However, over the course of the Story Links programme all the pupils appeared to have engaged
well with the story‐making and even thought about it in between the sessions. For example
Rosie’s Dad spoke about how ‘She’ll come in and go “You know what? I’ve got to read you a
story, I’ve got one for Tuesday, what about if Lily does this or Lily does that,”’ and Fred’s Mum
mentioned how ‘he talked about going to them in the mornings on the way to school’ and how
‘he has pride in doing the stories’.
Memorising the stories
Quite a few of the pupils would remember the stories very accurately:
He just remembers the words, in fact he remembers the stories... I
changed the name for ‘Lenny’, and I put ‘Len’ the lion called ‘Len’ and he
corrected me and said the next week and said, “It’s Lenny”. Pete’s TA
However, Harry’s mother thought that Harry was overly reliant on remembering rather than
developing new reading skills:
He loved them (the stories), he remembered them very quickly I have to
say, he’d read them once and he’d remember. So I still don’t feel he
reads any better, if I was honest. Harry’s Mum
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4.5.8 Pupils’ improved confidence in learning
As mentioned in para 2.3.4, low self‐esteem was identified by teachers and parents as a key
factor in pupils’ poor engagement with learning. Evidence from the interviews with parents and
teachers indicates that pupils’ confidence increased as a result of the programme.
Almost all the parents mentioned their child’s improved confidence in relation to reading:
‘I think it’s given him the confidence to have a go and try rather than just
looking at it and thinking that’s too difficult’. Aaron’s Mum
As the weeks went on he just got better and better... you could see the
confidence coming out of him.’ Pete’s Mum
A lot more confident, happy to try things, he wants to read now which I
think is a difference and he’s picking up books that he is actually
enjoying’ Ian’s Mum
Mark’s Mum spoke about how initially ‘when he saw a lot of writing on a piece of paper in the
beginning he would just completely switch off and he wouldn’t even start on it, and over the
sessions this has just completely changed.’ She thought his greater confidence in reading had led
to his having ‘the confidence now to start putting things on paper himself’. She added that the
stories themselves had allowed him to express a different and more confident aspect of himself:
He came into an imaginary world that he, where he was very interested
and confident and... he would be full of fun and enjoyment and courage
and ability. Mark’s Mum
Change in body language as an indicator of improved confidence
The majority of the Story Links teachers also referred to a progressive improvement in pupils’
confidence and engagement with the educational tasks in the Story Links sessions over the
course of the intervention. When asked how this was evident in sessions many mentioned a
change in pupils’ body language:
The first time... he kind of really hunched down... the thing that he does
when he’s a bit frightened, and at the risk of expressing himself or
having a go... But by the end he was happily engaged and relaxed... and
that [being hunched up] really wasn’t there anymore. Aaron’s SL teacher
To start with he was a little bit nervous and bewildered...he would read
with his hand or even his fist in his mouth... originally would loll about
and have his head on the table... but after the first couple of sessions
much more enthused... he would sit up and read... Pete’s TA
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At first his behaviour was a bit all over the place in the early sessions....,
he didn’t actually fall on the floor but he wriggled a lot and tipped the
chair back and seemed I suppose bodily he seemed uncomfortable [for]
probably three at least and then he became much, much, well I suppose
the sitting, better... Certainly in the Story Links times I’ve seen him smile
a lot and through the whole session... that was quite a change. Mark SL teacher
4.6 Overall pupil stress related to behaviour, emotional and social difficulties
There was a significant reduction in overall stress related to BESDs for all of the pupils over the
course of the Story Links programme as shown by the SDQ results in Figure 16.
Figure 16: Goodman's SDQ for impact on pupils' Overall Stress
Key: ≤11 = Close to average; 12‐15=Slightly raised; 16‐18=High; ≥19 = Very High
The Goodman’s SDQ calculates Overall Stress as the sum of the scores for Emotional Anxiety
(Figure 3) + Behavioural Difficulties (Figure 7) + Hyperactivity & Attentional Difficulties (Figure
16) + Difficulties Getting Along with Other Children (Figure 6).
The results in Figure 16 indicate that all of the pupils in the evaluation were experiencing above
average Overall Stress before the intervention, with 9/12 pupils showing ‘very high’ overall
stress. Improvement in this area was marked: all of the pupils showed a reduction in overall
stress, with 8 of these pupils no longer in the ‘very high’ category for Overall Stress post
intervention.
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The two pupils, Beth and Ed whose scores indicated most improvement for overall stress were
both at the same school although they had different Story Links teachers. (See section 4.3.2 for a
more detailed discussion of Ed’s case.)
Both pupils had a lot of competition from siblings for their mother’s attention: Ed had a
disabled brother; and Beth had 6 siblings within quite a ‘chaotic’ household. For both of them,
the weekly sessions with their mother appeared to have provided a secure emotional base from
which they could better engage in life at school.
The pupil, Mark, who showed least improvement for Overall Stress, registering ‘very high’ for
overall stress both in the pre and post SDQ is discussed in section 4.1.1.
4.7 Summary of overall views on the Story Links programme
4.7.1 Pupils’ overall response to the Story Links programme
All the pupils said they had enjoyed the sessions) with the majority saying they ‘really enjoyed it’
as shown in Figure 17. Reasons given by pupils for their enjoyment were primarily because they
liked making up the stories and seeing their parents in school (see also section 4.2.1).
Figure 17: Pupils' Enjoyment of Story Links Sessions
4.7.2 Summary of parent and Story Links teachers views on the overall benefit of the Story Links
programme
Parents and Story Links teachers were asked to complete a Likert scale rating the ‘overall
benefit’ of the Story Links programme. As Figure 18 shows all parents and teachers thought that
the Story Links programme was of ‘significant’ or ‘very significant’ overall benefit to the pupils,
with parents rating it more highly than the teachers.
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Figure 18: Parents’ and Story Links Teachers’ Views on the Overall Benefit of Story Links
The reasons given by teachers for the programme’s overall benefit focused on improved pupil
confidence (see 4.5.8), improved behaviour (see 4.3.2), an improvement in the home/school
relationship (see 4.4.8) and an opportunity to develop the pupil/TA relationship (see 4.2.3).
There had been a few concerns from the Story Links teachers. One initial concern was whether
parents would attend but this did not prove to be the case in practice (see 4.4.1); one teacher
had found working with the couple difficult (see 4.4.6); and a few had some minor concerns
around the process of running the groups related to ensuring the story reached home in time,
the TA’s timetabling and the appropriateness of some of the TA’s contributions (see 4.1.5).
The reasons given by parents as to why they thought the Story Links programme had been
beneficial reiterated those of the teachers were that their child’s attitude to reading had
improved (see 4.5.1) and their self‐ confidence had increased (see 4.5.8), while several also said
that it had improved their child’s behaviour (see 4.3.2 ). To complete this chapter here are a few
of the parents’ comments on the overall benefit of the Story Links programme:
I was pretty sure this would help his reading, which is why I was doing it.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the impact it’s had on the rest of his
life.... His teacher was absolutely amazed at the improvement in his
behaviour...at home his behaviour has improved tenfold Ed’s Mum
She is a lot more confident (with reading)...I think it’s gone fabulous. I’m
dyslexic myself so I have trouble with reading and writing and it was my
biggest fear that my daughter would have it also. Rosie’s Dad
Brilliant, it’s been really good. It’s really been worthwhile and he’s really
enjoyed it. And I’ve seen such a change in him as well. Pete’s Mum
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Chapter 5. Discussion and Summary of Findings and Future Developments
Discussion of Findings
The findings presented in chapters 3 & 4 provide an in‐depth exploration of the experience of delivering the
Story Links intervention to parents and pupils at risk of exclusion due to BESDs. As the overview of the
target group shows (2.3) the majority of the pupils were representative of some of the most vulnerable
pupils in our schools. Most presented a high degree of anxiety in school and many of their presenting
behaviours matched those that are typical for pupils with attachment anxiety (Geddes, 2006).
The majority of the parents of these pupils fell into the ‘hard to access’ group of parents and the initial
expectation in many of the schools was that they would not maintain attendance on the programme.
However this did not prove to be the case (4.4.1) and many teachers expressed ‘shock’ and surprise’ that
the parents had turned up. Evidence from the interviews with parents indicated that finding the sessions
‘fun’ and noticing an improvement in their child’s engagement with reading were major factors. The
commitment of the Story Links teachers is also to be acknowledged here. In one school it appeared that the
teachers’ text and phone reminders showed parents that they, as well as their children, were being ‘held in
mind’ (4.4.1). The regret expressed by many of the parents at the sessions finishing (4.4.8) indicates that
they too had found the sessions ‘emotionally containing’. What was remarkable was that in one or two
cases, where the parent failed to do any of the reading tasks at home and where there were concerns
about the child’s general welfare, parents continued to turn up to sessions.
In most cases pupils had looked forward to their parents coming into the sessions and these had been
overall ‘mutually enjoyable’ for both pupils and parents. As mentioned in section 1.3, this mutual
enjoyment is a key factor in promoting attachment. The unpredictability and spontaneous creativity of the
story making activity had been ‘fun’ and often caused laughter in the groups
Data gathered from initial interviews with pupils and parents indicated that the activity of reading at home
certainly had hitherto not been a shared ‘mutually enjoyable’ experience for any of the pupil/parent sets.
However, the use of the jointly created stories as the home reading text appeared to have turned this
around with the majority of the parents reporting, at the end of the intervention, an increase in the pupils’
interest in reading at home and their own parental efforts to make time to hear their child read.
While some of the parents had poor or no literacy skills themselves, this did not deter parents from taking
part and all of the parents were keen to support their child’s literacy skills. This focus on literacy and
addressing their child’s emotional and behavioural difficulties obliquely through the story metaphor were
significant factors in maintaining the attendance of parents‐ many of whom had previously had a ‘tricky’
relationship with the school. Another benefit of the programme was to provide parents with a chance to
develop their skills and confidence as parents both in terms of putting down boundaries and supporting
their child’s learning (4.4.5).
As mentioned in section 1.3, Hughes (2004) has identified co‐construction of meaning and the co‐regulation
of affect as central features in the cultivation of attachment security. The analysis of the stories throughout
chapters 3 and 4 shows that the co‐creation of stories did in fact facilitate a ‘co‐construction of meaning’ by
parent, pupil and teacher with emerging themes relating to the child’s presenting issues. Many of the final
stories presented a search to understand difficult issues such as conflict with peers or being overwhelmed
by powerful emotions.
In relation to co‐regulation of affect, it was noticeable that, while created by sequential contributions from
pupil and adults in the group, all the stories had an internal coherence. This indicates both that parents, TA
and the teacher were able to ‘attune’ to the child’s imaginary world and that the child was also able to
respond appropriately, albeit unconsciously perhaps, to the particular metaphor presented by the adults.
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However, at times, some parents needed support to attune to their child’s story contribution rather than to
react to it (4.4.3). In all cases the Story Links teacher had been able to help the parent to accept and reflect
on their child’s contribution rather than trying to change it. Mostly this attunement in the co‐creation of
the stories was to the child’s internal emotional world although in one or two cases the parent tended to
focus on external events (4.4.3).
A further attunement developed in relation to the parent listening to their child read. Many parents were
aware of how emotionally fraught this activity could be and during the intervention some of them had
managed to respond more sensitively to their child’s pace, their need to have a ‘go’ themselves and the
time at which the reading took place. However, several still felt the need for support in the best way to
support their child’s reading skills.
The evidence indicates that pupils felt emotionally comfortable in sessions and, while difficult emotional
issues were often addressed in the metaphor, they had generally not felt emotionally overwhelmed by the
stories. Only in one case was this evident (4.4.7) and here the pupil was able to self‐regulate the emotional
overwhelm surrounding his absent father by saying he didn’t want to do another story about the father
dragon who had just taken off in the story (literally) leaving the young dragon in charge .
All pupils had behaved well overall in the Story Links sessions. However, a few pupils sometimes tried to
control their parent (4.5.7) by interrupting them when it was their turn to speak and in one case the pupil
had tried to dictate to her mother that she should not come the following week. However, in all cases the
parent was supported by the teacher to maintain the adult position and the pupil responded by no longer
presenting as a ‘parentified’ child and allowed the parent and other adults to be in charge. And in one case
the story had mirrored the mother’s successful attempt to get her son to sleep in his own bed rather than
in hers.
The majority of the pupils showed a significant improvement in their behaviour. However, as one parent
pointed out this could also be a ‘slow process’, particularly given the nature of the pupil target group, and
the behaviour of some of the pupils could slip back at times.
While pupils’ attitude and confidence in reading appeared to have improved there was in fact little progress
with regards to their standardised reading scores. The short interval between testing and the fact that two‐
thirds of the cohort were below the baseline of the NARA may have been factors here. There was evidence
that many of the pupils had memorised the stories. While this showed that the stories had resonated with
pupils, there is the issue of whether some had used this familiarity to avoid developing new strategies for
reading. This might be addressed by including some sentence level ‘games’ for the pupil to do at home in
future programmes e.g. cut a sentence from the story into words and the pupil has to order the words
correctly.
One aspect of the programme that did not appear to have really worked in many cases was the
engagement of the classteacher in supporting the behavioural reward system. This might be addressed by
including the classteacher in a discussion with the parent and pupil at the start of the programme.
There was clearly an imbalance in gender both relating to the pupils and the attending parents. While the
majority of pupils referred were boys this is representative of the wider gender imbalance relating to
exclusions (DCSF, 2009). All except one of the attending parents were the mother and the only father to
attend only did so with his wife. There were some reservations from the teacher about working with the
couple but it may be that work with another couple might be very different. It would also be interesting to
explore ways to engage fathers to attend, particularly as many of the stories addressed issues relating to
them.

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Summary of Findings
The aim of this evaluation was to assess the impact of the Story Links Programme on pupils’
emotional and social well‐being; pupils’ behaviour and rates of exclusion; the engagement of
parents with their child’s learning; and pupils’ reading skills and engagement with learning.
The evaluation included a pre and post intervention standardised behavioural screening
questionnaire completed by classteachers, a pre and post intervention standardised reading
assessment, the analysis of over eighty co‐created stories and the analysis of over eighty
interviews with parents, teachers, TAs and pupils who participated in the Story Links
intervention.
The findings indicate that the intervention had a number of positive effects in supporting pupils’
emotional and social well‐being, engaging them in learning and improving their behaviour. It
also engaged parents in their child’s learning, quite significantly given the vulnerable nature of
the pupil cohort and the low literacy levels of some of the parents. However, while pupils’
attitude to reading significantly improved there was little progress in reading skills as measured
on the Neale Analysis of Reading Assessment (NARA). The findings will now be summarised in
relation to the main areas of investigation.
5.1 Impact on pupils’ emotional and social wellbeing
5.1.1 Significant improvement in pupils’ emotional and social difficulties
The reasons given by teachers for the referral of pupils to the Story Links programme (para
2.3.5) indicated that the cohort was representative of some of the most emotionally vulnerable
pupils in our schools. The Goodman’s SDQ results and the interviews with parents and teachers,
presented in sections 4.1 and 4.6 provide clear evidence that there was a reduction in the
overall emotional stress for all the pupils’ over the course of the intervention and that for the
majority of the pupils this reduction was significant.
There was also a significant improvement in peer relationships as indicated by the Goodman’s
SDQ (para 4.2.2), completed by the classteacher, and observations from the parents and school‐
based professionals who noted that several of the pupils were more able to manage conflict
situations the classroom and playground after the intervention.
It is not claimed that reduced levels of emotional distress were due solely to the Story Links
intervention as there were other factors, both at home and school, that may have had an
impact. However, the evidence from the interviews did indicate that the Story Links programme
had been a significant factor.
5.1.2 Co‐created stories addressed pertinent emotional and social difficulties
The analysis of the co‐created stories, presented in the two individual pupil profiles in chapter 3
and throughout the cross‐case findings in chapter 4, indicates that many of the themes explored
in the story metaphor mirrored pupils’ presenting emotional, social and behavioural issues.
The co‐created stories had a powerful effect in several ways. Firstly, they often served as a
reminder of the nurturing role of the parent. Secondly, many of the pupils’ stories addressed
100
issues relating to both friendship difficulties and sibling rivalry. Thirdly, they enabled the
children to address their anxiety through the metaphor in the story with prominent themes that
emerged being lack of friends, fear, abandonment and lack of nurture.
A content analysis of the stories indicated Story Links teachers were able to provide story
openings that mirrored pupils’ presenting emotional issues and that pupils instinctively
projected their own concerns onto the story characters.
According to comments from parents and pupils (para 4.2.1) the sessions had succeeded in
providing a ‘mutually enjoyable activity’, a factor in promoting positive attachment (Bowlby,
1988). What appeared to be particularly important to the pupils was the undivided attention of
the parent without distractions from siblings or household chores. The work with the Teaching
Assistant both in the main and follow‐up sessions during the week also provided opportunities
for the pupils to experience a positive attachment relationship with a school‐based figure. In
fact, it was the TA rather than the Story Links teacher who seemed to take on the role of the
child’s ‘substitute attachment figure’ providing them with a ‘secure emotional base’ in school
(Bomber, 2008).
A critical aspect of the intervention was that the parent would engage and reflect on the
metaphor in the co‐created stories to address their child’s behavioural and emotional issues.
The Story Links teachers reported that most parents were able to do this, though initially some
parents were more able to do this than others (para 4.4.3). A quarter of the parents had also
begun making up stories with their child at home and in two cases, siblings had been included in
this activity.
The role of the absent father was a significant and surprising finding. Many of the stories
indicated a preoccupation with an absent father (para 4.4.7). In some stories pupils highlighted a
yearning for more contact with their fathers and in others a sense of abandonment. In two
cases, the Story Links programme appeared to have led to the fathers, both of whom were
separated from the child’s mother, coming into their son’s school for the first time.
5.2 Impact on pupils’ behaviour and rates of exclusion
5.2.1 Significant improvement in behaviour and a reduction in exclusion
By the end of the programme there had been a significant reduction in the SDQ score for
behavioural difficulties in the classroom for the majority of pupils (para 4.3.1). This
improvement was also noted by parents and Story Links teachers. Some pupils had taken a few
weeks to settle into the Story Links sessions but all teachers reported that pupils’ behaviour had,
overall, been remarkably good with only a few needing to be reminded to listen and not
interrupt others. Some teachers and parents expressed surprise at how well pupils had behaved.
There was a significant decrease in pupils’ exclusion rates from school, the classroom and the
playground during the Story Links programme (para 4.3.7). Six of the twelve pupils had
previously been excluded from school, with two of these exclusions being in the last year, and
another pupil regularly self‐excluded when anxious. During the programme no pupils were
excluded from school. This was in contrast to the twelve months prior to the intervention, when
eleven of the twelve pupils had regularly been removed from the classroom or playground
because of their behaviour.
101
5.3 Impact on the engagement of parents with their child’s learning
5.3.1 A positive engagement of parents with their child’s learning
Given that many of the parents had not had regular or positive contact with the school before
the Story Links programme, the level of attendance was remarkably good with only two out of
the fourteen sets of parents who started the programme not completing it (para 2.3.6). The
twelve parent sets who did complete and whose data is included in the evaluation attended at
least seven out of ten of the sessions, with five parents attending all. Teachers’ initial
apprehensiveness about parents not turning up did not prove to be the case.
Parental attendance was supported in some schools by the commitment teachers providing a
pre‐intervention meeting for parents, the SENCO’s support in choosing parents, and regular
phone and text message reminders from teachers to parents about the times of sessions (para
4.4.1).
5.3.2 A positive impact on the home‐school relationship
All the teachers and a majority of the parents thought that the programme had had a positive
impact on the home‐school relationship (para 4.4.8). For the parents, it was the positive focus
on the pupils’ learning rather than their poor behaviour that seemed to have made a difference.
Teachers commented that many of the parents had either had infrequent contact or a ‘tricky’
relationship with the school in the past, but that the Story Links programme had turned this
around.
5.4 Impact on pupils’ reading skills and engagement with learning
5.4.1 Significant reduction in hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in the classroom
There was a significant reduction in hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in the classroom.
This was indicated both by the SDQ and observations of classteachers (para 4.5.7). In the Story
Links sessions, all pupils engaged well with the story‐making aspect and many talked about the
stories between sessions (para 4.5.7). Quite a few would remember the stories very accurately
indicating that they had paid good attention to what had been said.
5.4.2 Minimal increase in reading ability as measured on the NARA
There was minimal progress in the pupils’ reading ability as measured by the NARA (para 4.5.5).
Eight out of the twelve pupils were below the 6.01 starting reading age for both accuracy and
comprehension before the Story Links programme. While four showed an increase in reading
age for accuracy and six for comprehension, when the pupils’ ages were factored in the progress
was negligible: the standardised scores and percentile ranks for accuracy showed a decrease for
two pupils and an increase for just one; those for comprehension scores showed an increase for
three pupils and a decrease for one pupil. Overall, only one pupil made significant progress for
both accuracy and comprehension, as recorded by the NARA, and this was the pupil with the
highest initial NARA score.
Given the very poor initial reading skills of the cohort and the relatively brief average time
interval between pre and post assessment, it might have been useful to use another early‐stage
reading assessment to measure small‐step progress alongside the NARA.
102
5.4.3 Improved engagement and confidence in reading
While the NARA scores indicated that pupils had made only limited progress with their reading
skills, both teachers and parents commented that all pupils showed an increased interest in the
activity of reading (para 4.5.6).Teachers mentioned how some pupils would now look at books in
quiet reading even though they were still not independent readers. Others were able to focus
more on sounding out words.
The programme also seemed to have an impact on pupils’ low academic self‐esteem, a key issue
identified by parents and teachers in the initial interviews as impeding the learning of the entire
target group. In the post interviews, pupils’ increased confidence as a reader was a prominent
theme. This developing self‐confidence was also evident in the Story Links sessions, not only in
how pupils contributed during the sessions, but also in their changed body language (para
4.5.8).
The inclusion of a follow‐up reading programme, to be initiated once the 10‐week intervention
Story Links programme has been completed, might ensure that the progress made in pupils’
attitude and parental engagement in reading, is capitalised on to further develop pupils’ reading
skills.
5.5 Future developments
5.5.1 Implications for further research
In the light if the above findings and discussion there are a number of issues that might be
explored in future research into the impact of the Story Links intervention. These are as follows:
• Investigate ways to engage more fathers in the Story Links Programme.
• Revisit the target group to assess the long‐term (minimum one year) impact on reading
skills and parental engagement with learning.
• Investigate the inclusion of sentence level ‘games’, drawn from the story, for the pupil
and parent to do at home in order to extend word recognition skills
• Investigate ways to continue the involvement of parents with pupils’ learning after post
Story Links.
5.5.2 Key recommendations
Following the positive impact the intervention had on pupils’ emotional and social well‐being,
pupils’ behaviour, pupils’ attitude to reading and the engagement of parents in their child’s
learning, it is recommended that:
• The Story Links training is made available to a wider group of educational professionals.
• A training‐for‐trainers programme is developed so that training delivery is not solely
reliant on the current trainer.
• Provide training or written guidelines for TAs supporting Story Links.
• Investigate ways to Increase classteachers’ involvement in the intervention.
• Use an early reading assessment tool alongside the NARA in future evaluations in order
to identify small step progress in reading skills.
103

Contact for future developments
Trisha Waters
Senior Lecturer in Special Educational Needs
University of Chichester (Bognor Regis campus)
Email: t.waters@chi.ac.uk (or trisha.waters@ntlworld.com)
Mobile: 07974 835024

104
Bibliography and additional resources

Bibliography
Bettelheim B (1991) The Uses of Enchantment, London: Penguin Books
Bion, W (1984) Learning from Experience. London: Maresfield
Bomber, M (2007) Inside I’m Hurting. London: Worth Publishing
Booth, T & Ainscow, M (2002) Index for Inclusion. Bristol: CSIE
Bowlby, J (1973) Attachment and Loss: Volume II: Separation, Anxiety and Anger. London: The
Hogarth Press
Bowlby, J (1988) A Secure Base. London: Routledge
Cole, T, Visser J & Upton, G (1998) Effective Schooling for Pupils with Emotional and Behavioural
Difficulties. London: David Fulton
Desforges, C & Abouchaar, A (2003) The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and
Family Education on Pupil Achievement and Adjustment: A Literature Review, Nottingham: DfES
Publications
DCSF (2009) Permanent and fixed period exclusions from schools and exclusion appeals in
England, 2007/8 DCSF website:
www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000860/SFR18_2009_FINAL.pdf (accessed 9/10/09)
Elliot, J & Gibbs, S (2008), Does Dyslexia Exist? Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 42,
Numbers 3‐4, August/November 2008, pp. 475‐491(17) Blackwell publishing
Geddes, H (2006) Attachment in the Classroom. London: Worth Publishing
Goodman R (1997) The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581‐586.
Hughes, D (2004) An attachment‐based treatment of maltreated children and young people
Journal of Attachment & Human Development, Volume 6, Number 3, September 2004 , pp. 263‐
278(16). London: Routledge
House of Commons Education and Skills Committee on SEN (2006) 3rd Report, Vol I, London: The
Stationery Office Limited
Jurkovic, G (1997) Lost Childhoods: The Plight of the Parentified Child. New York: Brunner/Mazel
Primary National Strategy (2003) Nottingham: DCSF publications
National Audit of Support, Provision and Services for Children with Low Incidence Needs (2006)
Nottingham: DCSF publications
Neale, M, (1997) Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, 2nd revised version, London: GL Assessment
105
Piaget, J & Inhelder, B (1979) The Psychology of the Child, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Simons, H (2009) Case Study Research in Practice. London: Sage
Social Exclusion Task Force (2007) Families at Risk Review, Reaching Out: Think Family. London:
Cabinet Office
Steer, A (2009) The Steer Report, Learning Behaviour: Lessons Learned, a Review of Behaviour
Standards and Practices in our Schools, Nottingham: DCSF Publications
Warnock, M (2005) Special Educational Needs: A New Look. London: Philosophy of Education
Society of Great Britain Publications
Waters, T (2009) Chapter: Story Links: Therapeutic Storywriting with Parents and Pupils at Risk of
Exclusion in Adelizzi, J. & Ficksman, M. (Eds) The Dynamics of Educational Therapy (2009). New
York: Routledge
Waters, T (2008) The Use of Therapeutic Storywriting Groups to Support Pupils with Emotional
Difficulties. British Journal of Learning Support Vol. 23, No 4 pp 187‐192
Waters, T (2004) Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in
Primary Schools. London: David Fulton
Waters, T (2004a) Writing Stories with Feeling: An evaluation of the impact of Therapeutic
Storywriting Groups on Pupils’ learning. Kingston‐on‐Thames: South‐east Region SEN
Partnership
Web resources
Teachers TV video Working with Families featuring a Story Links session and downloadable
supporting resources:
www.teachers.tv/video/34482
Book of sample stories created by pupil and parent in Teachers TV Working with Families video:
www.therapeuticstorywriting.com/downloads/dino/dino‐the‐dragon‐web.pdf
Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting for Story Links resources, training and project details:
http://www.therapeuticstorywriting.com/StoryLinks/Training.php
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Teachers’ TV video clip of modelled Story Links session with parent
and pupil

The measuring tools were trialled in two schools prior to their use with the evaluation target group.
Teachers TV made a video of one of the sessions delivered by the principal researcher and this can be
viewed online at: www.teachers.tv/video/34482

107
Appendix 2: Goodman’s Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

108
109
Appendix 3: Letter to Schools Participating in the Evaluation of the Story Links
Intervention
Spring 2009
Dear Participating School,
Thank you for considering taking part in the evaluation of the Story Links intervention in your school
following the attendance of a member of your staff at the 3‐day training course. Story Links is a University
of Chichester project, delivered in collaboration with the Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting, and
supported by the TDA and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
The project aims to use parent partnership to support pupils at risk of exclusion because of behaviour,
emotional and social difficulties and who also are behind with their reading (see pages 4 & 5 for a
summary of the overall project).
We are looking for a number of schools, who have participated in the training and who will be
implementing the intervention, to take part in the evaluation aspect of the programme.

School Resources Required to Implement the Story Links Programme
The evaluation will take place in schools that can ensure the programme is run for a 10 week period
(either side of a holiday break is fine). An hour needs to be allocated for sessions with each parent+ pupil.
Parent, pupil + a TA attend the session for the first 30 min. The teacher running the group then requires a
further 30 min to write up the co‐created story at the pupil’s reading level directly after the session. A
copy of the story is then given to the TA who delivers 2 X 20 min session with the pupil during the week
and another copy goes home to the parent for the home‐learning part of the programme.

Evaluation
The evaluation will involve a researcher visiting your school before the intervention and at the end of the
10 week intervention. They will interview the parent, the pupil, the classteacher and the facilitating
teacher. Each of these interviews will take a maximum of 20 min. The researcher will also conduct a pre
and post assessment of the pupils’ reading ability using the Neale analysis of reading.

Focus of the evaluation
The evaluation process will assess the impact of the Story Links intervention on the emotional and social
well‐being of the pupil; engagement of the parent with their child’s learning; rates of exclusion; incidents
of challenging behaviour that could lead to exclusion; reading skills; and pupil engagement with learning
in the classroom.
Ethics and Confidentiality
The researcher will adhere to the British Educational Research Association code of ethics. Neither the
school nor persons interviewed will be named. Parents will be informed of these conditions before being
interviewed and if they choose not to take part in the research, this decision will be respected.
I would like to thank you again for considering being part of the research evaluation. If there is anything
else you would like to discuss, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Trisha
Trisha Waters
Senior lecturer in SEN | University of Chichester
t.waters@chi.ac.uk |mob: 07974 835024
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Appendix 4: Questions for Parent and Pupil Interviews

Parent/carer pre intervention
1. How do you feel X is getting on at school?
2. How do you think he/she is getting on with his reading?
3. What do you think would help him/her do better at school?
4. How is X at home?
5. Does he have any siblings? /How does he get on with them?
6. What’s it like being X’s mum/dad/carer?
7. What is his relationship like with his other parent?
8. What’s your relationship like with the school?
9. Do you have time to tell or read stories with him/her at home? Would like to do this
more? What would help to find the time?
10. (If yes) How often do you do this?
11. (If yes) When do you do this?
12. Is it an enjoyable experience for both of you when you read together?
13. What sort of stories/books does he enjoy?
14. Do you enjoy reading this sort of book with him?
15. How do you feel about being part of these sessions?
16. Is there anything else you would like to add (about other adults present, timing of
sessions, childcare needs etc)?

Parent/carer post intervention
1. How have you felt about coming along to these sessions?
2. Has the pattern of reading with your child changed during the programme?
3. How often did you read with X?
4. Where and when did you read?
5. What was it like making up the stories in the sessions?
6. What did you think about the stories?
7. What were the main themes?
8. How did you feel X related to the stories? Do you think they’ve helped X? In what way?
9. Can you choose a story that was particularly significant? Tell me what was significant
about this story.
10. Do you think the sessions have made a difference to how your child is at school?
11. In what way?
12. How would you describe your relationship with the school and staff? Has it changed?
13. Would you recommend the Story Links course to other parents?
14. How would you describe it to them?
15. Any other comments?

111
Pupil pre‐intervention
1. How much do you enjoy reading?
Not very much It’s OK I enjoy it I really enjoy it
Why?
2. How good do you think you are at reading?
Not very good OK Good Very good
Why?
3. Would you like to get better at reading? Why?
4. Do you read most at home or at school?
5. Do you read with anyone at home? Who? How often? What’s it like when you read to
your Mum/Dad/Carer?
6. What sort of books do you like?
7. What are you reading at the moment?
8. What’s your favourite thing to do with your Mum/Dad/carer?
9. How do feel about reading in class?
10. Do you enjoy being at school? Why?
11. What’s your behaviour like in school?
12. Do you have friends in your class?
13. What do you like most about school?
14. What do you like least about school?
15. What are your hobbies or favourite things to do out of school?

Pupil post‐intervention
1. How have you found coming along to the Story Links session?
Not liked it at all It’s been OK Enjoyed it I really enjoy it
2. Do you think it’s made a difference to your reading? In what way?
3. How much do you enjoy reading now?
Not liked it at all It’s been OK Enjoyed it I really enjoy it
4. How good do you think you are at reading now?
Not very good OK Quite good Very good
5. Have you been reading more at home? What’s this been like?
6. What were most of the stories about?
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7. What’s it been like having your Mum/Dad/carer coming into school for the Story Links
sessions?
8. Which story did you like most?
9. Is there anything else you would like to say about the sessions?
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Appendix 5: Postintervention Likert rating questions for Story Links teachers and
parents
1. What impact do you think has the Story Links programme had on:
a. Pupil’s reading
No change Some improvement Significant Very significant

improvement improvement
Comment:

b. Pupil’s awareness of his/her feelings and the feelings of others

Comment:

c. Pupil’s behaviour

Comment:

d. Home/school relationship

Comment:

e. How would you describe the overall benefit of the Story Links programme in
supporting the pupil:
No benefit Some benefit Significant benefit Very significant

benefit
Comment:
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Appendix 6: Overview of the pupils presenting issues and their family context
(all names changed)
Pupil Reason for referral (all pupils also SEN register Family context Parental and
identified as having poor reading skills) sibling
literacy
difficulties
1. Aaron Previously excluded for behaviour from Statement ADHD, Parents separated.
9yrs mainstream school ‐now attends special Lives part of week with
ASC & lit
school. Temper tantrums sometimes Mum and part with
requiring restraint. Dad. 1 younger sibling.
2. John Aggressive behaviour in classroom. Sent SA+ Parents separated. Dad
9yrs home at lunchtime because of fights on Lives with disabled illiterate.
BESDs & lit
playground. Mother’s carer. Mother. Sees Dad in
Mum & older
holidays.2 older
siblings have
siblings in care
poor literacy
3. Mark Pulls hair out, hurts other children, SA+ Parents separated.
8yrs refuses to work, v. tearful, calls out Lives with Mum, stays
BESDs & lit
makes noises & sings in class, easily with dad regularly.1
upset, hides in cupboard. younger sibling
4. Pete Non‐compliant, excluded from SA+ Parents together.
10yrs classroom & school trips because of his
BESDs & lit
aggressive and non‐compliant
behaviour. Complaints from other
parents about his behaviour
5. Rosie Emotional rather than behavioural, Self‐ SA+ Parents together. Dad
9yrs excludes when upset. Self‐harms, Arguments with illiterate,
BESDs
scratching face, pulls out hair. neighbours. Mum poor
& lit literacy.
Younger sibling. Dad
disabled.
6. Ed Severe anger issues at home and school, SA+ Parents separated. Older sister
10yrs little empathy. Step‐dad & sees own has poor
BESDs and lit
dad fortnightly. literacy
Disabled brother at
same school.
7.Lisa 8 Immature, distracted, poor literacy, SA+ Parents separated.
yrs friendship difficulties, non‐compliant. Sees Dad.
BESDs & lit.
8. Beth Runs out of school, excluded last year SA+ Parents together. 6 Both parents
9yrs for aggressive behaviour, shouting and siblings. illiterate. All
BESDs & lit.
swearing at adults siblings have

poor literacy.
9. Fred 7 Excluded from prev. school then out of SA+ Parents separated. Step‐father
yr school for 4 months. Self‐harming: Step father, biological cannot read
BESDs,
bangs head on table, punches himself. f. not known. 3 older English
Has threatened to kill himself. Sp & lang. & lit. siblings.
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10. Ian Prev. excluded from mainstream school Statement ADHD, Parents together‐ child

10 yrs because of aggressive behaviour – now ASC & lit. has conflict with dad
at special school. Temper tantrums. who has Asperger’s
11. Ross Inattention a ‘major’ issue. Looked After SA In and out of care of
9yr Child. Concerns about progress with care from birth to 5 yr
BESDs (ADD), &
learning. One or two behavioural prior to long term
Lit.
incidents in school but mainly ‘good’ foster care placement.
12. Harry Hiding under tables and loud wailing in SA+ Parents separated. Dad,
9 yrs classroom, regularly excluded from Lives with Mum and granddad &
BESDs & lit
classroom, easily upset by random sees Dad regularly. brother
things e.g. the sun shining Niece in his class has illiterate
been taken into foster
care.
(SA= School Action; SA+= School Action Plus; Sp & lang= Speech and language difficulties; lit=literacy difficulties)

116

Contact for future developments
Trisha Waters
Senior Lecturer in Special Educational Needs
University of Chichester (Bognor Regis campus)
Email: t.waters@chi.ac.uk
Mobile: 07974 835024

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f

Bo the Elephant was stroppy and

George the Goat

They had to go to the vet, but they didn’t want to go.

Mummy Tiger roared, ‘Alright you can stay up at night then.’

Goodman’s SDQ results Pre‐intervention Post‐intervention

‘Yes… no… oh, so close… oh, I just missed!’

(Mother) Their mother came home from the shops.

Peter said, ‘And I wish I hadn’t blown that fireball at you.’

Sammy and his Dad

As Freddie was thinking he started

School Classroom Playground School Classroom Playground

Sammy the squirrel was by a tree

Sammy was getting more and more

He went with mum and bought a tall tree in one shop.

It was a Christmas tree.

He went into a shop and bought a water pistol.

Dino did not burn it because he had the water pistol.

Lily and Brian Make Plans

All the other animals had come to fear and be

Every time I ask him he won’t play.”

Specific observations of the impact on the home/school relationship

Not very much It’s OK I enjoy it I really enjoy it

Not very good OK Good Very good

Not liked it at all It’s been OK Enjoyed it I really enjoy it

Not liked it at all It’s been OK Enjoyed it I really enjoy it

Not very good OK Quite good Very good

No change Some improvement Significant Very significant

No change Some improvement Significant Very significant

No change Some improvement Significant Very significant

No change Some improvement Significant Very significant

No benefit Some benefit Significant benefit Very significant

10. Ian Prev. excluded from mainstream school Statement ADHD, Parents together‐ child

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